WUFA strike still affecting UWindsor students
By Hannah Larking
News Editor
February 4, 2009
 UWindsor students are still feeling the effects of the Windsor University Faculty Association (WUFA) strike almost four months after the incident.
According to Gregory Marcotte, director of registrarial services at the University of Windsor, on the day after fall 2008 grades were due from professors, thousands of marks were still outstanding.
“Part of the problem was the delay of exams because of the strike,” Marcotte said. “We have received a lot of complaints [from students] about late grades.”
But Marcotte claims that this frustration is misdirected. “When grades are submitted, they go through a paper trail of approval,” Marcotte said.
Once a professor has completed the final grades, they are submitted to the department heads and then to the deans. After that, they are placed on the student information system (SIS), with no delay possible on the part of the registrar’s office.
According to University of Windsor senate by-law 1.12, “Unofficial grades for a course shall be ... submitted to the dean no later than seven calendar days after the final examination of the course has been written, except in the faculty of law.”
For the fall 2008 semester, seven days after the final examination period translated into Jan. 6. On Jan. 14, eight days later, over 5,000 grades were still not posted, and this number excludes law and graduate school programs.
Late grades create problems for students who are unsure of whether or not they passed a class and need to retake it. Other problems include applications to graduate and professional schools and colleges being delayed because completed transcripts are unavailable.
Two students facing this problem are Sheena Brennan and Chelsie Pritz; both are English majors graduating at the end of this semester.
Brennan and Pritz applied to the Creative Book Publishing program at Humber College. On Jan. 14, both of them received a letter from the college stating that their applications had been deactivated because they were listed as incomplete.
After looking into the problem, Brennan and Pritz discovered that because their last grades were not posted until Jan. 14, Humber College had been delayed in receiving a complete transcript.
To add to the problem, Humber College requires a second part of their application to be completed before any candidates are reviewed. Candidates are informed of the details of this second part upon the completion of the first part, leaving Brennan and Pritz with less than a week to finish it off.
“I have about a week to read a Canadian-authored book written in the last year and write a short essay on it, as well as another essay. I would also have to get two reference letters, write a detailed resume, and be interviewed. I don’t even know if that is possible,” Brennan explained.
“We should have received notice for the second part of the application in October when we requested the applications to be sent out,” Pritz added. The students had until Feb. 1 to complete this portion.
The Creative Book Publishing program begins in May, and Brennan was counting on getting in because at the time it is offered next, she will be getting married. “I wanted to have this course done and started working so that I could save for my wedding,” she explained.
Brennan is still waiting on a final grade. “The part that upsets me the most, though, is that my transcripts were sent with an incomplete grade. Even with the best references, that is going to look bad on me, and what’s more is that I know I did well in that class and that grade could have helped me out.”
Pritz sent out her application for the program almost four months ago, which she thought was well in advance. “I was completely confused [when I got the letter]. I thought that since I completed the application well in advance that I would not have any problems,” she explained.
“It was a Friday night when I got this letter. All the offices were closed until Monday. I was so angry. When you pay for something to be done, you expect it to get done,” Pritz added.
Marcotte maintained that this delay was not because of a problem based on the registrar’s end of the process.
“We have one of the fastest systems to get transcripts out,” Marcotte said.
Still, Brennan and Pritz agree that if the strike hadn’t extended the exam period, their transcripts would not have been so late, and their applications would have been fully completed and in advance—the way they had originally intended.
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