Opinion > September 4, 2008

The recently announced change made to the minimum grade point average required to be put on the Dean’s List is very disturbing.

Basically, to sum up our complaint, it seems to us like the administration wishes to take away the one remaining piece of credit we’ve got for our hard work here. It is crystal clear that a 3.0 at Wake Forest is very deflated in comparison to a 3.0 at many other schools, including some of our cross-admits. We are going to really miss that little, friendly letter in its attractive envelope that sat happily in our campus boxes, waiting to congratulate us.

The fact of the matter is that this quick and large increase in requirements will make the vast majority of us who feel that sense of pride in being on the Dean’s List suddenly lose our accredited status. A 3.4 at Wake Forest is simply hard but so is a 3.0. If any change had to be made, it should have been grandfathered in like divisional requirement changes. We do not buy that this will make students do better at this challenging school.

We are glad that Student Government is taking the initiative to speak up for the rights of students on this one in openly criticizing this plan. We can only hope that the administration is attentive to students’ opinions, although we doubt they will. There seems to be a pattern developing here; the administration gets its mind made up, makes changes and then laughs at petty students’ complaints. Is it not possible that they’re wrong?