British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University has introducing a new grade of FD — meaning failure with dishonesty.? Although this would appear to strengthen the hands of those who take offense at cheating for grades, there’s a catch:
Quoting Rob Gordon of SFU’s School of Criminology,
The FD grade will be available to department chairs who feel that a student?s behavior warrants a severe penalty, usually because they are repeat violators…
And therein lies the problem, at least if something similar were brought in at McGill.? Rather than enforcing a consistent policy that is applied fairly to all students, the SFU model leaves each decision in the hands of a department chair.
Even more problematic, at McGill anyway, is that the university would be in violation of its own rules if it committed to print (on a student’s transcript) a “guilty” decision by the Committee on Student Discipline.? In our neck of the woods, nobody apart from said Committee and the (guilty) student is supposed to know whether or not the student was found guilty of cheating.? I know… you can’t make this stuff up.