December 8, 2022
Dear L&S Students,
Yesterday the Letters & Science Executive Committee (EC) deliberated on a formal request from the Berkeley Division of the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC), advocating for emergency grading policy adjustments in light of the ongoing strike of academic student employees. The ASUC suggested that, due to the disruption of teaching and learning across the College, the L&S Pass/No Pass deadline should be extended so as to give L&S students the option of moving certain courses from a letter grade to a Pass/No Pass grade.
In response, the EC unanimously approved the following changes:
- The L&S Pass/No Pass late action deadline will be extended to 11:59 p.m. PT on Sunday, December 11, 2022.
- Students can submit a request to change their grade option from letter grade to P/NP. (Please note that students are not allowed to change from P/NP to a letter grade.)
- Any late action P/NP request submitted Dec 8 -11 will not count towards the limit of two late actions permitted by the College over the course of a student’s time in the College.
- Passed (P) grades from this term (fall 2022) will be allowed to fulfill L&S Essential Skills requirements: Reading & Composition, Quantitative Reasoning, and Foreign Language.
We also wish to underline the limits of these approved changes. Students should be aware of the following:
- A UC system-wide rule specifies that, in order to graduate, undergraduates must take ⅔ of their units with a letter grade. The changes the EC has approved for Berkeley L&S do not alter this system-wide rule.
- Many departments or programs within L&S have requirements for how many P/NP courses can be counted toward their major. In such cases the departments or programs themselves will decide whether to implement policy changes in response to the current circumstances.
- Student decisions to take a class P/NP can have consequences for a student’s academic and professional trajectory. For example, high-impact majors within L&S often consider students’ academic performance in prerequisites and related coursework to determine whether to admit them to their major.
- The L&S Executive Committee has jurisdiction only over the College of L&S. Our decision to extend the P/NP deadline in L&S does not apply to students affiliated with other colleges, such as the College of Engineering or the College of Environmental Design. If students are pursuing a simultaneous degree across L&S and another college, both colleges would need to approve a late-action P/NP change.
If you wish to change a course of yours to P/NP, please refer to this extensive FAQ, which also includes a link to the form you will need to fill out to request this change.
We wish you success in the coming week of exams.
Sincerely,
Scott Saul
Professor of English
Chair, L&S Executive Committee
Jennifer Johnson-Hanks
Professor of Demography
Executive Dean, College of Letters and Science
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