Kicked while you're down

For Denisha Dennis, it had been a rough semester. Her GPA had dropped a bit, and she needed to work hard to get it back up. But as she moved back to campus after break, imagine her surprise when her dorm key didn’t work.\nIt wasn’t an accident. The State University of New York at Old Westbury decided to kick any student with a GPA below 2.0 out of the dorms until they raised their GPA. That decision affected Dennis and 86 other students last semester. Having been on the books since 1994 but never implemented, this policy has drawn a great deal of anger from both students and the educational community. \nWe tend to agree. While the plan’s goal seems to be deterring students from getting low marks, its effect on students who fail its requirement might prevent them from rectifying their mistakes. Moreover, this approach centers solely on punishment, with no positive motivation in sight. \nNow, Dennis travels two-and-a-half hours each way to campus, and pays $30 dollars per day in transportation expenses. The mere fact that she’s willing to put up with a set of conditions that can only be described as outrageous speaks to her desire to improve her grades. However, improving is now much more difficult. In this, we wonder why on earth the university sees fit to punish students who do poorly in school by giving them more obstacles to success. \nPerhaps a better policy would be to force students earning poor grades to live on campus, as national studies suggest that students who live on campus do better in school. Many universities use this tidbit of information constantly as a tool to promote on-campus housing. Old Westbury, however, doesn’t seem to know it. \nThis policy certainly provides motivation, and there’s something to be said for the value of deterrence. But then again, there’s something to be said for reason. Campus administrators claim that 13 of these 87 students kicked out of the dorms took courses over the winter break to raise their GPAs. That might be true, but 23 of those 87 have already dropped out. So much for making them do better. And at a university that is certainly not one of the country’s most selective, surely the faculty knows that it is dealing with students who already face difficulties earning high marks. With its policy, it might be motivating some students to keep their grades up, but those who fail to do so have almost no chance of actually doing better. So what if some students keep their GPA above a 2.0, when the policy enforced to make that happen creates huge barriers for other students to actually obtain an education? It’s not as though this regulation comes from an Ivy League, or for that matter, a private college. Old Westbury is a state institution charged with educating its citizenry, and kicking struggling students out of their dorms does not advance that goal.