By Bobbi Carsley, Arts Sub-editor
Exams, coursework, essays, timed assessments. Words that usually inspire a certain level of dread in even the most put-together of students. Countless times, we are told that although these forms of assessment are daunting, they are, of course, necessary and nothing that hard work and dedication can't conquer. Nothing that a few all-night stints in the A.S.S. won’t solve. Or an office hour with your tutor won’t help enlighten.
Less talked about by the university is what happens when things aren’t fine. What actually happens when something prevents a student from completing their work as normal?
In the wake of Bristol’s newly shifted December assessment period, undoubtedly, many students have aced their submissions and are now enjoying their time off. However, my concerns are for the students who are now realising they will have to fill out forms of extenuating circumstances (commonly dubbed ECs) and potentially face summer reassessments.
The information the University of Bristol provides in their exam season emails about ECs is often difficult to decipher. An email sent by the Education Team earlier this month to School of Humanities students reinforced that ‘it is your [students’] responsibility to formally declare’ your ECs in the required form.
However, the hoops that students completing EC forms must go through feels like a complicated, bureaucratic loop at times. It’s a system that remains insensitive to those the university is trying to support: the students going through external pressures and difficulties while trying to complete their studies. Having to condense potentially distressing, complicated circumstances into a form with a mere 1500-character limit, roughly 250 words, appears like an unfair system.
My experience with this system comes from having to complete an EC form for a reassessment last summer. While I met my friends in pub gardens and toasted to the end of the academic year, celebrations felt hollow. My happiness for them was overshadowed by the knowledge that half an hour previously, I had broken down in tears after being ferried from one university official to the next.
Department heads, directors of exams, school of humanities support teams, I had to email them all. I felt completely unprepared and was left trying to understand what exactly an EC form was. How was it different from an academic appeal, why was completing an EC form required for my desired conditions of summer reassessment, and who exactly was the ‘Extenuating Circumstances Committee’, and how were they different to the ‘Faculty Progress Committee’?
The stressful personal circumstances I had been through, which warranted this reassessment, felt like the forgotten sibling to the new wave of anxiety created by the EC reassessment procedure.
I was filled with questions and concerns regarding my reassessment: how it would be marked, would I need to write a new essay, would my EC form lift the marking cap of 40 typically placed on reassessments? The vague responses I received from my email rally with the university of ‘you’ll be contacted with further information closer to the time of reassessments’ did nothing to alleviate my anxiety.
The timing of my situation felt like I had been placed in limbo. TB2 was over, so it was harder to get hold of teaching staff, but the reassessment period wasn’t set to begin until mid-summer. The strict deadlines and requirements for EC forms regarding reassessments made me feel stuck in a waiting room where I knew the doctor would expect me to arrive at my appointment with my diagnosis prepared and laminated in hand. It was up to me to educate myself about what constitutes an EC, what different information was required on the form, and the different recommendations members of the Extenuating Circumstances Committee could make regarding my reassessment.
However, while researching support for my EC form, I discovered the Academic Advice Team within the Bristol Student Union. If there is anything I would recommend to students who may be struggling to navigate the reassessment procedure or the EC form, it would be to book a session with these guys. The Academic Advice Team, as part of the student union, operates independently of the university.
They are there to support students with any academic difficulties they may be experiencing, helping anyone with anything from academic appeals and EC forms to disciplinary support and accusations of plagiarism. In a single half-hour session with a member of the Academic Advice Team, I learned more about the intricacies of an EC form than I had from the days of emailing university staff and scanning the university’s website.
It made me realise that there was help available to me. It was just needlessly difficult to locate. Empathy and sensitivity need to be reinjected into the University of Bristol’s treatment of students going through difficult external circumstances. In a university of around 30,000 students, it is difficult to be receptive to every single person’s needs. But to leave students who may be battling family bereavement, poor health, mental health issues, or countless other additional stresses feeling isolated as they navigate a complex EC procedure is not the right system.
Educating students from the very start of university about Bristol’s EC form procedure and the assistance and support the Academic Advice Team provides, should they need information and help, are easy steps that can be taken to make the possibility of external circumstances affecting students’ studies less daunting.
But it's essential that the road to improvement is walked by both students and the university. It should not be up to students to prepare themselves for how best to battle a complicated and thus inaccessible academic procedure. For the EC procedure to have meaningful reform, the university needs to provide its students with greater support and learn from the experiences of students who have gone through it.
