Make-up Opportunity for Mid-Term Exam

For those of you who were not present at last night's class (or who ducked out after the break), I wanted to make you aware of an opportunity I announced to the class to re-submit certain portions of your mid-term exam. This opportunity is limited, so please read this over carefully:

If there were any questions or sections on the exam that you failed to answer or, alternatively, that you really blew (by which I mean you received less than half-credit for your answer) you may re-submit those answers only to me at the next class session (this coming Tuesday, May 13th). Please submit your original mid-term exam along with any revised answers.

Again, please do not completely re-do the test. For example, if you got 6 points or higher on the first question, leave it alone. However, if you received:

5 points or less on Questions 1 or 2;
8 points or less on Question 3;
13 points or less on Question 4; or
10 points or less on Questions 5 or 6,

then feel free to submit revised answers to those questions only.

Sorry, gang, but the point of this is not to give everyone in the class another shot at the mid-term. (It was hard enough reading 45 of them the first time around.) I realize that all of you -- well, almost all of you (there was one perfect score) -- would be able, after reviewing my comments on your exam and having me go over the test in class, to submit better answers that would raise your grade. That is not the point of this make-up opportunity. My objective, instead, is to give those of you who really screwed up the exam a chance to put yourselves on a better footing to come out OK in the class.

Please note that this opportunity is not available to anyone whose grade was docked for failing to credit your sources. I do not believe that it would be consistent with the University's Policy on Academic Integrity simply to give those of you who violated that policy another shot at it. If you copied your answer from Wikipedia, or wherever, and I caught it, then you are simply out of luck as far as the mid-term goes. (I already gave everyone a chance to turn their term papers in a week later, in order to accomodate any of you who might have had any "misunderstandings" about the propriety of lifting your answers from a website and failing to credit the source.)

Is this fair? I am sure that the approach I am taking will be construed as unfair by some: why am I giving a student who got a C-minus the chance to raise his grade, when someone else who received, say, a B-plus, isn't receiving the same opportunity to raise hers? The answer, frankly, is that there were 17 grades (out of 45 total) of straight "C" or lower, including 7 that were in the "D" range (60-69) and two "F" grades (not counting three students who did not turn in the mid-term at all). I am trying to give that group a chance to get back into the game. The rest of you are fine: you can still ace the class based on your performance on the term paper, final, and overall class participation. The mid-term was, after all, worth only 25% of your total grade.