Fifteen years ago, MU switched from a standard five-grade system to the plus/minus system it has now. Now, the Missouri Students Association is asking Faculty Council to reconsider that decision.

Although asking for an overhaul of the grading system might be too optimistic on MSA’s part, there’s no denying the system deserves some tweaking.

As it stands, MU’s grading system allows for pluses and minuses, and those distinctions play into students’ grade point averages. A student with all B-’s has a different GPA than one with all B’s, for instance.

Some students, including many in MSA, think these specifics put students at a disadvantage. Some other universities run on systems that call a B a B, whether it’s an 80 percent or an 89 percent. While that system brings up the GPA’s of those students with 80s and 81s, it also, somewhat unfairly, puts them on the same field as students with 88s and 89s.

Both the plus/minus grading system and the standard system are bound to favor some students and disadvantage others. And while we appreciate MSA President Xavier Billingsley’s attention to the grading system, it’s unrealistic to hope to revamp the entire system by the end of his term in January.

Instead, he and the rest of the student body should take on campaigning for an addition to the plus/minus system, the A+.

Currently, students can earn passing grades from a D- to an A+, but can’t affect their GPAs with an A+. This puts students at a disadvantage: penalized for an A- but unrewarded for an A+.

If Faculty Council is set on a plus/minus system, it needs to consider how unbalanced the current system is, and the effect that has on students. By treating an A+ like an A, high A’s aren’t being incentivized. If a 93 is treated like a 99 percent, how many students will make the push for anything higher than that 93 percent?

Opponents of adding GPA weight to an A+ worry it will inflate grades. It’s true that to give an A+ any pull, it would have to be worth more than four GPA points, making it possible for students to end up with averages over 4.0.

But those students would only be getting credit for the grades they earned, and the inflation would be minimal. Compared to students from schools who do account for A+’s in GPAs (such as Stanford, Cornell and the University of Oregon), MU students’ GPAs are almost deflated.

That can be an issue for students applying to graduate schools or other selective programs. Hypothetically, an MU student with the same grades as a student from a school that accounts for A+ would have a lower GPA. Those inequalities will always exist since it’s unlikely every university will ever use the same grading system. It’s never going to be perfect, but that doesn’t mean MU shouldn’t try to give its students the advantage in those situations.

Admissions offices are trained to catch those discrepancies, but MU shouldn’t chance that. If other schools are crediting students for high grades, MU should as well.

When Billingsley and MSA Vice President Helena Kooi ran for office last year, ridding MU of the plus/minus grading system was a major part of their platform. They’ve been working on it since January, but, so far, Faculty Council doesn’t see the effect of the current system on students.

Although we agree with its plight, it’s hard to argue for MSA when it hasn’t released any data backing up the claim that students are calling for a change to the grading policy. It’s conducting [an online survey](http://studentvoice.com/p/Project.aspx?q=75c420de547484475ae6ea8b0fdafc98f074723783453788cc8793f39153b57c9ddad24a291eca4b0de9a27d2918164b0fd8f4bd1797547ee8164bb971a8226be990baac13a0b760&r=b1455875-ada9-4b81-aaf7-ff11283828e4), but as a voluntary survey, it’s almost bound to bring in skewed results — the only people who care about changing the grading system are those who dislike the current setup.

MSA doesn’t have bad intentions investigating this. We just want it to be more convincing in its mission to serve students — polling a small number of students and equating their response with the entire student body isn’t responsible. We hope MSA can find better ways to find out how students feel about the grading system, or if they even find it worth reevaluating.

With proper backing, we hope MSA will continue to look deeper into this issue and encourage Faculty Council to do the same. If most students are actually calling for a standard grading system, we hope changing the system will be considered.

But for now, Billingsley and MSA have the ability to affect students’ GPAs by pushing for GPA weight for A+’s. By working with Faculty Council, MSA has an opportunity to move forward in changing the system in the short term. The fight to reward A+ students with fair GPAs is worth fighting.