IRVINE : Faculty Clarifies Grade Change Stand

The Academic Senate of Irvine Valley College has issued a statement clarifying its position on a controversial grade change that led a professor to file a lawsuit against the Saddleback Community College District.

Senate President-elect Wendy Phillips said the group has not yet taken a formal position on the matter, and that faculty members who have spoken out in support of writing professor Hugh Glenn’s lawsuit against administrators who raised the grade of one of Glenn’s students do not speak for the entire faculty.

“While we support the right of any faculty member to speak individually to academic issues, we wish to make clear that the Irvine Valley College Academic Senate alone speaks for the faculty as a whole on such issues,” read the statement released by the 14-member senate, which represents 97 full-time and 110 part-time faculty members.

The statement further said: “Whether the student’s grade grievance in this case is valid is something that we cannot know at the present, since constraints of confidentiality prevent our hearing both sides of the issue.”

Glenn gave a student a D for a class taken in spring, 1991, and later said the student had completed all course requirements but failed to submit an acceptable term paper.

The student appealed the grade under the district’s grievance procedure to Glenn’s immediate superior, Peter Morrison, chairman of the college’s School of Humanities, who ruled that the grade should be raised to a C.

Morrison’s decision was then reviewed by the vice president for academic affairs, the school president, legal counsel and District Chancellor Richard Sneed.

Morrison and Sneed are named in the lawsuit, which was filed on Jan. 7 in Orange County Superior Court. Sneed has stated that Morrison’s action “was in accordance with board policy and state law.”

Phillips said that 18 of the 20 faculty members who work under Morrison at the School of Humanities recently signed two letters in support of Morrison’s decision.