UM GEO members: Some final grades 'falsified'

Dearborn ― Members of the Graduate Employees Organization accused the University of Michigan on Thursday of inputting thousands of "falsified" grades that were left undone as result of the ongoing graduate student instructor strike.

GEO members said Thursday that the UM registrar is pressuring their colleagues to deliver final grades in classes in which they were the sole instructor.

"There is a scandal happening at the University of Michigan," said Jared Eno, GEO president, during a press conference before the regents met on the UM-Dearborn campus. "Thousand of thousands of grades have been falsified in one of the largest, most systematic cases of academic misconduct in recent memory.

"Over the past few weeks, the (UM President Santa) Ono administration has gone from department to department, bullying and intimidating employees into submitting fake grades for students ... students that they did not teach and may not even know. Why would a university, especially one as committed to excellence as the University of Michigan, force its workers to commit mass academic fraud? Unfortunately, the answer is that the Ono administration has done this to avoid paying grad workers a living wage and giving us basic dignity in our workplace."

UM spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said Thursday in an email that "the claim that the registrar is pressuring non-instructional staff to submit straight As is false.""The truth is that deans at each of our schools and colleges have been tasked with working with department chairs and faculty to ensure any missing grades are entered as soon as possible," Fitzgerald said. "The methods for resolving grades depend on individual circumstances of each class.

"Schools and colleges also are taking steps in individual cases, whenever possible, to ensure our students’ future education and plans are not compromised," Fitzgerald said. "Every effort is being made to ensure that grades are as accurate as possible utilizing the evidence that is available. Students should not ― and will not ― be penalized for their GSIs’ failures to complete their contractual obligations."

Graduate student instructors highlighted the nearly 2-month-old work stoppage as grades from the winter semester are almost complete and UM petitioned the Michigan Employment Relations Commission this week for a neutral party to start a fact finding process and issue a nonbinding recommendation to reach a contract.

During the regents meeting, Provost Laurie McCauley said that concerns have been raised in recent days over the methods some departments have been using to resolve missing grades that have been withheld by a "small number of instructors."

"We are looking into these concerns and asking leaders across our units to do all they can to ensure that grades are as accurate as possible and meet our standards of academic integrity," McCauley said. "Leaving students without grades for a course they have completed is disheartening. It affects their financial aid, applications for work and graduate school, enrollment in spring and summer classes and other career plans."

The board is "demanding a full investigation," said Regent Paul Brown, chair of the board, after the meeting. He declined to comment further.

About 2,300 graduate student instructors and staff assistants have been on strike at UM since March 29, the longest since the union formed in 1974. Its last contract expired May 1. They have been in negotiations for a new contract since Nov. 17.

Ten days ago, the chair of UM's Department of Comparative Literature emailed faculty and graduate student instructors and let them know that he had filed the grades for 126 students, said Luiza Caetano, a graduate student instructor in UM's Department of Comparative Literature.

"He said that he had painstakingly looked into each of our syllabi and grading policies to calculate students' final grades," said Caetano. "He then gave them full credit for any assignments that were left incomplete because of the strike. In his email to the department, he wrote that he had to do this."

Caetano said wrote her students and let them know what was happening. She told them her contract ended on April 30 and she hadn't received a paycheck in April so any work that she continued doing would be unpaid.

"Because of that, I would not change any of the grades unless they asked me to," Caetano said. "UM's effort to guarantee grades at all costs ... is shameful."

GEO provided emails from faculty who have sent letters to them, informing them of how they determined grades, including one from Christopher Hill, chair of the Department of Comparative Literature.

“In my own view, as the member of the department ultimately responsible for the submission of grades in these courses, waiting until the end of the strike, when striking (graduate student instructors) have said that they will complete grading, also was not a tenable choice because the slow pace of university-GEO negotiations suggests that the strike will continue for some time," Hill said. "I want to acknowledge, however, that my decision to submit grades is not one that all members of the department will agree with.”

Alejo Stark, a UM graduate student instructor for a 200-level Spanish class that examines justice through film and language, said he was supposed to put in the final grades for his students once the contract with the university was settled.

"Yesterday morning, staff members with the Romance Languages and Literatures assigned all As to the students in my class," Stark said. "This staff person does not have access to my grade book, nor do they have any knowledge of my students, nor do they have access to my syllabus. So all they can do was enter blanket grades. In this case, blanket As."

He suspected that some students will be happy or indifferent to their grades.

"None of them, I hope, will think this was just," Stark said. "The blanket grade fabrication is consistent with other grad student instructors in my department."

More than two dozen GEO members attended Thursday's regents meeting; some spoke during the public comment period and others shouted comments while officials were discussing contract negotiations.

McCauley reported that the university's negotiating team delivered a package that was one of the largest salary offers in its 50-year-history, which includes salary increases to GEO members on the Ann Arbor campus of 12.5% over the next three years and increase 6.75% in total raises over the same three-year period for GEO members .

She said most graduate student instructors would earn about $39 an hour by the end of the contract. When she said most graduate student instructors work 16-20 hours per week, eight months a year, someone in the crowd yelled, "Lies!"

When McCauley said, "The total package for our GEO members ranges, on average, between $64,000-$77,000," someone in the crowd shouted, "But how much do you make off of our labor?"

"One adverse effect of the strike is the withholding of grades by a small number of instructors. As of this morning, 95.5% of all grades have been submitted for winter term."

"Over our five-decade relationship with GEO, we have consistently arrived at agreements that support graduate student career success," she said. "We hope more frequent and collaborative bargaining will result in a mutually beneficial contract soon."

kkozlowski@detroitnews.com