For many graduating seniors at Towson University, it has been a personal goal to receive Latin Honors and recognition for their accomplishments. As of this May, that may all change with the new requirements being based off of the top 10 percent of each graduating class for each college.  

Khalid Srour, Tim Martin, Demar Pitter and Lindsey Newman, all either molecular biology, biochemistry or bioinformatics majors at Towson University, have started a petition to change the requirements back to the original standards based around GPA instead of class percentage. In this petition they are stating their arguments consisting of how this will negatively affect their futures, how this change has not been communicated properly to students and how this will be a disadvantage for students with “more rigorous” majors along with many others.  

“[The University doesn’t] communicate well with students at all,” Pitter said. “They said they didn’t have to put it in the catalogue, but they didn’t tell us until last fall. I saw on the Web site that they were changing the requirements and I was pretty pissed, but there was nothing I could do.”

Martin said he was frustrated with the University because he feels students are all being robbed of these honors.  He also said that it would be almost impossible for him, and others with similar majors, to even receive Cum Laude, whereas under the original requirements he would have received Summa Cum Laude.  In his opinion, each major has a different level of difficulty.  

Srour said Latin Honors are important if you’re going to graduate school or if you’re applying for a job with a future employer.  An ‘A’ student may not look like they were as hard of a worker without the official Latin Honors title on their transcript.

“Summa Cum Laude means with highest praise. Now they’re taking us, who’ve worked four years, we’ve worked so hard, and now they’re going to take that praise away from us,” Srour said.

Although these students said they assumed the catalogue was like their contract with the University, Cecilia Deems, director of graduation enrollment services, said it states in the disclaimer that the information in the catalogue may be amended at any time and does not constitute a contract.

Deems said that the University hopes this change will make getting Latin Honors more competitive and hopefully reduce grade inflation.

“Students are asking a lot of questions,” Deems said. “I would think for sure they’re not going to like it. Any change is hard.” 

Most students are saying they haven’t even heard of these changes.  

Deems said students were notified through mass e-mails that were sent out periodically, through the course catalogues since 2006 and on the school Web site, among others. 

Even with these announcements, there are still students who said they just found out this past fall about the change and said it wasn’t communicated to the entire student population very well.

“The problem for the graduation office is that the application process is ongoing, so you never have a moment in time when the class is tight,” Deems said. “So if I sent that e-mail today and you applied tomorrow, then you’re going to be upset because I didn’t tell you. So it’s very hard to make sure everyone knows, but we did our best to get it out in a variety of forms.”

Along with the change of requirements for Latin Honors, students will also not have their preliminary honors recognized in the commencement program, but instead will be notified by mail once the percentages have been calculated. 

Srour said he thinks with these changes, students who are applying to colleges and universities will see Towson’s new requirements and “will think ‘hey, it’s pretty tough to get honors in the first place, so why am I going to apply here?’” 

Srour said it will make it more competitive, but also asked if this should be at the cost of the student’s four-year education. So far, almost 150 students signed the petition in just five days. These students are trying to solidify their arguments before submitting it to the provost, and possibly the Student Government Association, before finals. 

“If all the University knows that we’re doing this, I’m pretty sure we’ll get a lot of signatures,” Srour said.

Article originally posted in The Towerlight