Students at Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) returned to school after the winter break complaining about grades for fall 2012 getting posted as late as Jan. 10. But according Associate Dean Mark Mattson, although not all grades were posted by the Jan. 2 deadline, this was not an unusual occurrence.

According to Mattson, late grade submissions may have been due to professors experiencing technical issues or due to incomplete course work from students. “Faculty sometimes miss a page of grades or don’t press submit in time, and so the grades don’t go through,” Mattson said.

Anastasia Pappas, assistant director of enrollment/academic records, said there were no technical issues preventing grades from getting posted. “There was a portal problem at the time, but it should not have affected grade submissions,” she said.

Students discussed their anxiety as they waited and repeatedly logged into their Fordham accounts over break to check their grades. Leath Cao, FCLC ’15, said, “I got my last grade Jan. 4. I just wanted to see my grades to get it over with so that I wouldn’t have to keep thinking about them.” When asked whether or not he felt annoyed or frustrated during the break because of the delay in grade postings, he said, “It was annoying. We pay good money to be here and sometimes we have to deal with frustration CUNY students probably don’t deal with.”

Brigitte Ayaz, FCLC ’15, said her grades were not completely posted until Jan. 10. According to Ayaz, “Two of my grades were posted very soon but the other three took a long time. I was frustrated and waiting on those grades because I wanted to know where my GPA stood before I applied for internships,” she said.

Aleksandra George, FCLC ’13, said the delay in grade postings negatively affected her law school application process. “I was trying to get an updated transcript with fall 2012 grades included for law school applications and I couldn’t,” she said. “I knew this semester was my strongest and the grades would have looked amazing on my transcript.”

According to George, “The school takes five to eight days to process transcripts, and once processed, the transcripts are mailed to Law Administration School Council (LASC), and my transcript couldn’t be processed in time for my applications.” George said that she is concerned because the delay in grade postings might make the difference between getting accepted into a top school or not. “I ended up with grades all in the A and A minus range, and the schools I applied to won’t see my strongest semester until after they make a decision to accept me or not,” George said.

Professor of communication and media studies Lori Knight discussed her struggles and frustration with the Banner system Fordham uses for my.fordham.edu. Knight said she was told that since she had updated her software to Mountain Lion, she had to use Chrome to access the Fordham banner system. “Of course, I didn’t find out until Monday of this week. It was extremely frustrating because some grades were posted while others weren’t, even after they were posted manually,” Knight said. According to Knight, other adjunct professors had also been experiencing technical problems. “Fordham constantly sends out emails saying not to update your computer to avoid these problems. But professors who are adjuncts and have other jobs have to keep up-to-date,” she said.