With the transition to exclusively online classes in full effect at MSU, many students have seen their grades drop, and the best solution is to move to pass/fail.

Many students didn’t sign up for online classes to start with because they knew they wouldn’t do well at them and are now left with no choice. Some professors haven’t been communicating well with their students, often time by no fault of their own, and a lot of students are having to live back home and don’t have a proper study/test environment.

As a result, there has been a petition on social media for MSU to pass all their students. As great as this sounds, I don’t think it’s right or fair to professors to make them assign work just to pass everyone. Instead, I believe giving students the choice of whether or not to make their class pass/fail is the best option.

In pass/fail, your grade, regardless of pass or fail, does not affect your GPA. This is good for students who have seen their grades tank to barely passing since the COVID-19 outbreak. This would really be positive for students who have to maintain a high GPA to stay in their program, such as nursing students.

GPA aside, this time of quarantine has been awful for college students’ mental health. They are already worried about getting sick, financially supporting themselves, their grandparents and parents getting sick, and they are lacking the social interaction human beings require. The last thing that needs to be on people’s minds is whether or not they’ll have to drop out because their grades have suffered so much.

For anyone who thinks this is impractical, many other prominent universities in Texas have adopted this system. There are over 140 universities nationally that have made pass/fail an option. That list includes Texas A&M University, University of North Texas, Texas State University, University of Texas at Dallas and Baylor University. There is no reason for MSU not to follow suit.