Written By: Tatyana Phelps

If SGA’s academic forgiveness bill is approved by the faculty senate, students who make a C or below in a course can retake the class for a better grade.

“The bill SGA passed supports changing the grade policy for students who take a class more than once,” Nicholas Buford, SGA vice president, said. “Currently, if you take a class twice the final grades of the two classes will average out. Our bill states that the higher grade should be the one reflected in the student’s GPA.”

The idea was proposed at last week’s SGA meeting, when SGA voted unanimously in favor of an academic forgiveness policy. However, this is not a policy that has to be approved by the administration; instead, it must first be approved by the faculty senate.

“This particular policy, dealing with grades, would not be an issue that the administration would be involved with at this point,” Dr. Kimberly Luse, VSU chief of staff, said. “Since it is suggesting a grade policy change, the faculty are the group who would consider this change and then bring forward a recommendation up through the faculty senate to the provost.”

This is not the first time that SGA has pushed for such an academic forgiveness policy.

“This is a policy that some senators and executive boards have attempted to get done in the past few years,” Nicholas Buford, SGA vice president, said. “In late September, the other three SGA executive officers and I challenged some of our senators to step up the effort to pass an academic forgiveness bill and get the job done.”

Many students are looking forward to the bill being approved.

“I think (a revised academic forgiveness policy would be) awesome, especially for the harder degrees, such as biology people that mess up sometimes and don’t always make the best grades,” Grace McAdory, junior communications major, said. “So that would be cool because I know a lot of people suffer in the harder classes.”

The petition, which ended on Monday, garnered at least 1,300 signatures, according to Buford.

“We’ll take those (signatures) and present them to the faculty senate and university administration,” Buford said. “Once the administration works out the details, we’ll have a better understanding of when the policy will be enforced.”

If the policy is approved, SGA hopes that it will go into effect Fall 2015.

At this time, the faculty senate will likely not discuss the academic forgiveness policy until its meeting on Jan. 22, 2015.