Striking U. of Michigan Grad Students Aren’t Submitting Grades. The Administration Wants Faculty to Fill In.

Grades are due on Tuesday at the University of Michigan. With graduate students still on strike, administrators have directed some faculty to submit grades on their behalf.

That isn’t sitting well with some faculty members who say that being forced to grade students they didn’t teach might be a violation of their academic freedom and professional ethics.

The end-of-semester drama mirrors what happened across the University of California system last fall, when graduate students continued their strike through finals. Many professors declined to submit grades in solidarity; others said they could not physically grade that many assignments on their own. Many UC campuses responded by extending grading deadlines and hiring temporary graders. The graduate students’ strike ended just before Christmas.

Michigan students, meanwhile, say they plan to continue their monthlong strike into the summer break. A union representative said graduate instructors are on strike for two main causes: affordability and workplace protections, like anti-harassment policies and investments in alternatives to policing.

A recent court order requires the graduate-student instructors to submit any grades that were recorded before the strike began in late March, and to turn in any ungraded assignments that were submitted.

On April 21, a Faculty Senate committee released a statement urging faculty members to “reject requests to grade students they have not taught.”

“A directive to outsource grading demands that we faculty engage in a pedagogical assessment of students we have not taught and do not know, which is a violation of professional ethics,” the statement read. “Bypassing faculty-of-record and hiring third-party graders is an infringement on faculty freedom.”

Rick Fitzgerald, a university spokesperson, said in an interview that he doesn’t think the directive qualifies as an infringement on academic or pedagogical freedom.

“When there’s an instructor who is unable to or will not report grades, then department chairs may appoint alternatives to complete that task,” Fitzgerald said. “We’re trying to not penalize the students who’ve completed the work for their semester.”

During labor disputes involving faculty or graduate-student instructors, university officials often point out that if undergraduates don’t have their grades submitted, they could risk losing financial aid or face other consequences. Many strike supporters see such arguments as a tactic to distract and divide the campus community.

Tensions on the Rise

Several departments at Michigan, including the sociology and anthropology departments, released statements supporting faculty who refused to comply with requests to grade students they didn’t teach. History faculty took it a step further, stating in a letter that they had made a collective decision to withhold grades until May 12, at which point they would reconsider.

Ashley Lucas, a professor in the department of theater and drama, said asking faculty members to grade students they didn’t teach is “an enormous violation of academic integrity.” Although Lucas hasn’t yet been asked to do any additional grading, she said she would decline.

“The university is asking us to undermine the pedagogy of GSIs who have labored throughout the course of the semester to set up certain expectations with these undergrads,” Lucas said. “So if I were an undergraduate and somebody who I did not know, who I hadn’t had a relationship with throughout the course of the semester, was grading me, I would feel very uncertain and incredibly frightened about how that grading would be accomplished.”

Timothy Reese Cain, an associate professor of higher education at the University of Georgia who studies academic freedom and labor, believes that outsourcing grades is problematic.

Faculty and departments have a role in setting grading policy for courses, Cain wrote in an email, but it is the right and responsibility of individual instructors to design grading practices that adhere to those overarching policies.

He said that being ordered to change those practices, especially in response to a strike, is a violation of academic freedom.

“For example, a professor overseeing a large lecture course with multiple smaller sections led by graduate-student workers could rightfully claim that their freedom of teaching is being violated when university administrators order them to change their grading practices in response to the striking workers,” Cain said. “Similarly, if a graduate student is the instructor-of-record for a course, their academic freedom would be violated if someone else graded the assignments and issued grades.”

Tensions have been on the rise between Michigan’s administration and the graduate-student union all month.

Michigan’s administration sought a court injunction to stop the strike, but a judge declined twice. Then, two protesters with the union were detained by campus police after protesting outside the off-campus restaurant where the university’s president was dining. The university withheld pay for striking graduate students for the month of April, according to the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO), the union representing graduate workers.

Amir Fleischmann, a graduate student in political science who holds a leadership role in the union, said he appreciates faculty members who’ve decided not to comply with requests to complete grading for graduate instructors.

Fleischmann said the administration’s request for replacement graders “undermines the pedagogical quality of the University of Michigan.”

“What this shows us, which I think is quite consistent with everything we’ve seen from this administration, is that they don’t care about the quality of instruction,” Fleischmann said. “They just care about having numbers to tick their boxes and have the bureaucracy continue to churn. So they don’t care that the grades that they’re putting in for the students are bullshit grades.”

Fitzgerald acknowledged that substitute graders are not optimal but said the university is doing its best.

“Not having a grade isn’t up to our standards either,” Fitzgerald said. “We’re doing our level best to make sure that they get the academic recognition for the work that they’ve put into their classes.”