By a margin of five votes, the Arts and Sciences Council rejected the Achievement Index proposal during Thursday afternoon's two-hour general body meeting.
The 19-14 decision came at the end of an often heated discussion about how to handle the problems of grade inflation and discrepancies between departmental grading practices. Although most speakers agreed that these problems must be addressed, they disagreed about whether the AI would help solve them. Developed by Val Johnson, associate professor of statistics, the AI would have produced an adjusted GPA for each student based upon his performance relative to other students in each of his courses.
"Given the discussion, I'm surprised that we won," said Melissa Malouf, associate professor of the practice of English, whose department spoke out in force against the proposal. "I hope that some of this statistical information can be used to begin a discussion on grading," she said, adding that data about professors' grading patterns could be collected without actually adopting the AI and imposing a flawed system upon students and instructors.
During the discussion, some faculty members voiced their philosophical concerns with the proposal.
James Rolleston, professor of Germanic languages and literature, called the proposal a "fetish of accuracy" that perpetuates an unhealthy and "competitive hierarchy."
James Applewhite, professor of English, said he could not vote for the proposal because it skirted the "crucial, central issue" of professors' grading problems and attempted to "apply a quantitative solution for what I take to be a qualitative problem."
Many of the faculty members who supported the proposal stressed that the measure's four amendments, which were adopted at a meeting of the council's Academic Affairs Committee Tuesday, eliminated some of their previous concerns.
Addressing some of his colleagues' premier concern, Joseph Grieco, professor of political science, said the administration would not have assumed automatically or felt pressured to adopt the AI at the end of the 18-month trial period-which would have begun May 1, 1997-but would have instead evaluated it based upon the information the University had gathered during the interim.
"I think the committee has done a very good job of addressing the potential pitfalls," Grieco said. "I understood the inertia argument when the [trial period] was... five years, but now that it is limited to two semesters, the risk might be mitigated."
Although David Malone, assistant professor of the practice in the education program, said-citing students' 88 percent rejection rate of the AI in Duke Student Government's recent referendum on the issue-student opposition to the proposal was rather significant, Steven Vogel, professor of zoology, said he knows students who are for the proposal.
"Frankly, students who are passionately against it are being heard well," Vogel said, "and those who are for it aren't going to the battlements."
Trinity senior Takcus Nesbit, president of DSG, said he was "relieved" the proposal did not pass. "The general feeling after the meeting seemed to be that someone had won and someone lost, but I don't think anyone won because we haven't solved the problem of grade inflation," Nesbit said. "I think it would be productive to have a grade inflation discussion and the upcoming curriculum review discussion coincide so we can deal with these issues at the same time."
Lawrence Evans, chair of the physics department and a vocal supporter of the proposal, said he was "extremely disappointed" with the vote, adding that he believes the defeat means an end to serious discussion of grading problems at the University. "[The vote] shows an enormous lack of courage on the part of the faculty and a fear of even considering something new," Evans said. "The worst part about it is that we have a serious problem here. We could all live with just giving A's and B's because that would still leave us with seven grades to give, but it doesn't work when one department is using that scale and other departments are using other scales."
Both Johnson and John Richards, professor of history and chair of the Academic Affairs Committee, declined to comment on the vote.
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