As a college student it’s sometimes easy to feel like a tiny cog in a bureaucratic machine—there are myriad hoops to jump through before anything can get done, and it’s easy to feel like your voice isn’t being heard. But sometimes, happily, that isn’t the case—and I’ll get to that in a minute.
Several of my classmates and I recently had a frustrating experience regarding the new honors criteria that were to be implemented in Spring 2008—the semester we graduate.
When I transferred to WSU in Spring 2006 it was with the understanding that if I met certain criteria I would graduate with honors. I transferred from a community college where my GPA was decent, but not stellar. I had a son my sophomore year at the community college, and my grades suffered.
However, I worked hard at WSU and maintained a good GPA in the hopes of graduating with honors. I was living and working in Rochester, and commuting to Winona daily with my toddler in tow.
I first heard about the proposed change to the honors guidelines shortly after my arrival at WSU, but I was sure I would be held to the standards that had been in place when I’d arrived.
It was disheartening to discover that the date for the new honors standards had been moved up—drastically—to the semester when I was to graduate. It was a further blow to discover that despite a 4.0 WSU GPA, my cumulative GPA would fall one-hundredth of a point below the new minimum requirement for the lowest form of honors.
I—and many of my friends and classmates, including my erudite colleague, Sam Keane-Rudolph—were very disappointed. We felt that our hard work at WSU was in vain and that we weren’t being heard.
But after making our case to the administration at WSU, we were gratified to learn that the implementation of the new standards would be pushed back an additional year.
Today I’m thankful that the administration listened to the appeals of students and made the right decision. We appreciate the recognition of our hard work here. We will leave WSU much happier than we would have otherwise.
So although I’m sure it’s far more common to hear complaints from students than accolades, today I want to express my gratitude that Winona State decided to push back the implementation of honors standards and grant its Spring 2008 graduating seniors honors according to the standards under which we were matriculated.
Thank you for listening, WSU. We appreciate it.

Reach Ruth DeFoster at RMDefost2404@winona.edu