Courses in Mid-Stream

At the beginning of this year (if you can remember) the Registrar insisted that departments must inform their students of how they were going to be assessed, and that departments stick to their assessment policies, no matter what. All very nice... Now the Registry is insisting that several departments, with nearly two-thirds of the academic year gone, should change their policies. The Information Science Department, which has no finals paper (total internal assessment) for several of its honours courses and has stuck to this policy all year, has just been told to change its policy. The Registrar has come across an outdated, forgotten regulation which insists on a finals paper for honours courses. They can't amend it until next year, they say.

This means that the students affected, who have been working extra hard during the year because of the requirements of having no finals paper, will now have to also go thru that mind-dulling, mental breaking process of sitting a finals paper. It also means that the staff of the department who have been busy all year keeping us busy, will now have to go thru that mind-dulling, heart-breaking process of writing the finals paper and marking the scripts. The Information Science Department is not the only department affected either.

This is obviously unfair. Students affected by this change in policy should join together and make a formal complaint to the Registrar — if they have any time to do so. Any such fellow student can contact me.

Robert McDavitt