Please forgive us.

For many students, college is a big adjustment that comes with even bigger mistakes.

Unfortunately, some of those mistakes include getting bad grades that will haunt us for the rest of our collegiate careers.

The Academic Forgiveness Policy that SGA passed will allow student records to reflect only the highest grade that a student receives in a course.

If a student receives a C, D or F in a course and takes the class later and receives an A or a B, the grade will be replaced instead of averaged.

We feel that this is a policy that needs to be backed and put into effect as soon as possible. Before that happens, it must be passed at the next Faculty Senate meeting on Jan. 22, 2015.

Many students will be able to boost their GPA if this policy comes into effect.

If a student takes a course and passes, it doesn’t matter what happened in the past. It doesn’t matter if the student takes the class three, four or 10 times. The point is that the student completed the course and learned what he or she needed to.

This will help especially in courses that are well outside of a major requirement. For instance, if an English student needs to take a math or science course, something that student is not comfortable with, he or she will get a second chance at the subject.

On the other side of the argument, students should be able to take a class and pass it the first time.

However, many students are away from home for the first time and are not properly prepared by high school to be in a college course.

Furthermore, once we get into major courses, there is another transition that needs to be made with some professors being more strict than others.

In an institution of higher education, such as VSU, the point is to spread knowledge, not how long it takes to learn. Just because we couldn’t learn a subject three years ago doesn’t mean we can’t learn it now.