It is that time of year again. When dozens of students look upon their university result report with dilated eyes upon the spot where an ‘F’ or two offensively blotches the computer screen. The rest of the results, even the ‘A’ s seem to shrink in their presence as hope is sapped from within the student’s very core. A few other students look upon a half-dozen failed units with tear-stained cheeks, contemplating their next job application for chambermaid.

An exaggeration, you might say, but results mean a lot within the university grinder, much more so than the academic levels preceding it. For, as is the case with a number of other universities world-wide (to which this contribution applies equally or more so), the regulations pertaining to resits state that, short of absence for a proven health reason or for some other reason arbitrarily decided to be good enough to justify absence, a student resitting several months later would be able to achieve a mark no greater than 45% of the mark, or a ‘D’ grade respectively. This when it is very clear that the paper being sat for is every bit as challenging as the first sitting session.

In other words it does not matter how good a student ultimately is within a given subject unit, if for any reason whatsoever short of the above reasons that student should fail, be excessively late for or even absent for the first sitting, that student would not only deservingly get an ‘F’ for that sitting but would then effectively be asked to swim with a brick chained to his or her ankles, the resit process severely weighted against success at a stage far more delicate than the  first sitting had been.

This is supposedly done to cut down upon abuse of the system. Yes, a student ‘might’ well decide to shun the final examination in order to brush up his or her grades within other study units but then why not implement a system similar to that of the Matriculation certificate? In other words why not charge a fee for every resit examination sat for? In that way the true abusers would pay without scuttling the chances of those genuinely unable to make the grade for whatever reason.

In case readers are wondering why it would be at all important to allow students to gain a fair grade, kindly reflect upon the following. The difference between a ‘C’ and a ‘D’ can make the difference between a distinction and a merit. The difference can also make the difference between being able to progress to the next academic year or repeating the present one… and it can also make the difference between a student remaining within the game and that student failing the course entirely, effectively meaning that several years of that person’s life have effectively gone to waste.

In the run up to the election the Nationalists lambasted the Labour party’s suggestion of a repeater class and yet they persist in failing to realize that they have been presiding over a repeater system for many years now. For how is one to ‘pass’ through one’s resits if the system sets the student at a disadvantage before they have even sat at the table? Just because other places have such a backwards system in place does not necessitate that the university of Malta is justified in persisting in this folly. The student organizations should take note and make their voices heard because this is every bit as serious a situation as any delay in the release of results.

It is not such a difficult issue to decide upon. What I am calling for, and I believe that other students and representatives should be calling for, is the right of a student to be assessed upon the basis of one’s own performance within a resit session and not upon some medieval dumbed-down mockery of a session intended to see if the quality of that student’s writing is sufficient to make a pass. Dolores Cristina please take note. This issue will come back to haunt you if it is not promptly rectified. The election is no longer at stake but the futures of thousands of students are.