Title: Brief Highlights of History of the UK Senate (Student) Retroactive Withdrawal Appeals Committee

Davy Jones comments:  “Prior to 1997, there was no specific policy on student retroactive withdrawal after the end of a semester, and so “outside of the rules” ad hoc requests would come to the office of the Senate Council Chair.  The original committee considering the substance of appeals was not a Senate committee –“it was organized through the Disability Resource Center and was intended to hear cases of students with disabilities. As more and more students applied for retroactive withdrawals, and there were increasing numbers of students who came with non‐disability issues, the committee was moved under the purview of the Senate so that it would be more of a faculty‐ and academic‐based committee.” (University Senate: 10/13/2008).” 

 “In 1997, the University Senate then replaced this process with a Senate Retroactive Withdrawal Appeals Committee (University Senate: 12/08/1997):     

 ‘[Senate Council Chair] Roy Moore said that there were several problems that the Task Force saw. First, different colleges were using different standards, different forms, and doing it in different ways.  If they are happy with that, fine.  If there is going to be consistency and fairness then there should be a uniform process. … The problem is that as a Senate Council Chair you have one College bringing complete documentation, the next has zero.  As far as consistency it is impossible.  There are serious legal ramifications as far as ADA is concerned.  You have Senate Council Chairs who have no legal background whatsoever.  Hopefully the composition of the committee will have individuals of that type of background.  There will be better decisions and less potential for lawsuits.’” 

 “Over subsequent years, various tweaks to the codified process have been made, such standardizing a single University-wide application form (University Senate: 04/12/1999), or another tweak to not allowing retroactive withdrawal to be used to remove an E grade that had been imposed as a result of academic offense (University Senate Council: 04/03/2006).  Another tweak was providing for the opportunity, but not requirement, for the course instructor to provide information in the student’s application for retroactive withdrawal (University Senate Council:  04/30/2007):

 ‘She [Committee Chair Katherine McCormick] said that there were colleges who operated in different ways, specifically with regard to the proposed Instructor Feedback Form (IFF). The SRWAC also wanted colleges to be more uniform in the processing of RWAs regarding stops.’” 

 “The 2019-2020 Annual Report of the Senate Retroactive Withdrawals Committee provides some information on the nature and number of the cases recently heard by the committee, including: 

‘[Committee Chair] Donovan (LA) went over the report and noted that requests are still high, but lower than the previous year. The number of applications is still high enough to justify moving forward with the planned changes to procedures to streamline the workflow. He pointed out that there are ongoing difficulties for applicants because of administrative reasons. These are often due to students who think they have withdrawn online for a semester but have not because the system will not drop a student’s last course online. They must do it in person, but they aren’t always aware of this. SRWAC recommends that there should be better communication with students about this issue.’”

This is the third post in an occasional series, “Davy Jones’ Locker.”  Follow along with Davy Jones, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Toxicology and Cancer Biology in the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, as he explores various aspects of University of Kentucky history through the University Archives and online at ExploreUK.uky.edu.  The “locker” in the accompanying photograph is one of the cubicles in the Special Collections Research Center’s Breckinridge Research Room where researchers can put their personal items.