This morning I was approached by a student who told me that neither his grade nor the grades of three of his fellow students had been submitted. That's a fairly common complaint around here and I've already resubmitted grades for twelve other students since the beginning of the semester. But here's the twist that makes this story so depressing: these four students took my academic writing class in the Spring of 2006, two semesters ago.

I still have my grade book from that semester, so I went back and after a good hour of searching I found their grades. (They'd each attended a different class, and none of them attended the class with the others in their major.) I typed up the "missing score" email explaining the mix up, and sent it to my contact lady. I received her reply fifteen minutes ago. To sum up: It's too late to change, and the students are out of luck. These students were set to graduate after this semester, but now they'll have to wait a year (because the necessary class is only offered in the spring.)

I've been lobbying for the right to enter my students scores into the system myself, instead of the current system where I turn in my scores to the department and they have a grad student mis-enter them for me. Now I'm going to get belligerent about it. This is completely unacceptable - the students passed the class with flying colors, and now they have to wait to graduate because a grad student didn't bother to type their grade into a computer. And now that the mistake has been caught and explained, the registrar will not make an exception to the "all-changes-must-be-submitted-before -the-end-of-the-next-semester" rule.