After this Friday, students will not be able to withdraw from an individual class, even if for medical reasons.
Students have historically been able to request a medical withdrawal from a class until the last day of classes in a semester. Beginning this Fall, the Nov. 11 academic withdrawal deadline will instead apply to medical withdrawals as well. Academic deans in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and the Pratt School of Engineering decided to change the policy at the end of last Spring. The earlier deadline for medical withdrawal is meant to encourage students’ communication with their academic deans about any mental or physical health-related issues with enough time left in the semester to seek help. The new policy also helps prevent pinpointing one class as the source of a medical issue, as students will still be allowed to request an incomplete or a medical leave of absence from all courses.
“The decision was made out of a sense of wanting to have a policy about courses be both consistent and fair to students,” said Norman Keul, an associate dean in Trinity College and adjunct associate professor of German.
Until this year, medical withdrawal allowed students dealing with extreme health issues to drop a class any time throughout the semester. These students were also permitted to underload even if they had already done so during their Duke career. Both an academic and a medical withdrawal result in students receiving a “W” on their transcript.
A deadline for withdrawal four weeks before the end of the semester allows students to take midterms and evaluate their course loads before potentially withdrawing from a class, Keul said. Students should identify their mental or physical issues early on, Keul added, and communicate with their academic deans to discuss possible solutions.
“In many cases students who came to us right at the end of the course clearly had issues that were long-standing,” Keul said. “We didn’t like that they were presenting themselves at that point when we couldn’t do much for them.”
But now students’ options for lessening their course loads have become more limited, he said. This amended policy emphasizes alternatives to withdrawal. Once the November deadline passes, students may only request an incomplete in an individual course or a medical leave of absence. Both require completion of work at a later date in order to meet the number of credits needed to graduate.
“It’s not as much a change in decision as much as it is re-emphasizing the withdrawal deadline,” said Lee Baker, dean of academic affairs of Trinity College.
After the withdrawal deadline, students have already completed the majority of the semester, Baker said. He added that requesting an incomplete would be a more appropriate option at that point because students would eventually receive credit for the work they have already done. Previously, a student would not receive credit if they withdrew for medical reasons. An incomplete and a medical leave of absence also prevent students from identifying an individual class as the cause for their medical problems.
“We found out that usually it’s not one class causing [students] to have a medical symptom, so students were choosing which class they thought was causing them mental or physical illness,” Baker said.
Junior Jerry Wang said she withdrew from her Statistics 101 class in the Spring of her freshman year for medical reasons.
“I was sick with a sinus infection for two weeks,” Wang wrote in an email Sunday. “Since my professor gives out a quiz every class, I felt that my grade was suffering from missing those quizzes, so I withdrew.”
Senior Graham Godwyn said he faced extreme medical circumstances in Fall 2009, and he demanded a medical leave of absence. Diagnosed with mononucleosis and swine flu simultaneously, Godwyn made this decision after talking with both his dean and doctor. Although students in Godwyn’s situation will still be able to take a medical leave of absence if necessary, he noted that there are still flaws in this policy. Students take leaves of absence for both medical and psychological issues, but there is no differentiation in the policy between the two.
“[Mentally ill students are] a liability for the school, so walking back from my dean’s office, my DukeCard was shut off, and I had to explain to them why I couldn’t move myself out of my dorm room immediately,” Godwyn said.
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