Editorial | Academic freedom

The fifth week of classes is usually filled with dread.

For students in classes with two midterms, especially lecture classes, it's the week of the first midterm.Unfortunately, it's also the last week Penn students can drop a class without leaving any permanent marks on their transcripts.

For many students, it's a very troubling week.

Stress builds before the midterm because of the test's implications. And while most of these first midterms fall before the drop deadline, students often don't receive their grades until the next week. This forces them to decide whether to drop a class without knowing whether their fears will actually pan out.

In our brief survey of other top universities, Penn is tied for the third-earliest drop deadline of all schools with 15-week semesters.

Students also can no longer change a class to pass/fail grading after the drop deadline. While Penn's drop deadline has a slight logic in preventing a teacher from ending up with no students two months into a class, there is no reason the pass/fail deadline cannot be extended.

Even at UCLA and Stanford, where semesters are only 10 weeks long, students can change a course to pass/fail at least six weeks into the semester - compared to week five here.

These policies create unnecessarily stressed students who are punished for taking academic risks. Students deserve the chance to take some risks with classes; that won't often happen when they only have five weeks to make up their minds.

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