As the midterm of the semester approaches, some students are having trouble deciding whether or not to withdraw from their courses, one student leader told the Educational Affairs Committee of the University Council at a meeting Tuesday.

Students who don’t receive grades before the deadline to withdraw may not be able to make an informed decision about their future in the class, said Tyler Biringer, the undergraduate student representative on the committee.

The deadline to withdraw from a course this semester is Oct. 22.

“We’ve had several reports of students that have had either a test or a project right before the drop deadline, and it was graded after the drop deadline,” Biringer, a sophomore from Roswell, said. “So the student really wasn’t aware of where they stood in the class.”

But members of the committee said they had already taken steps to help solve this problem.

Last year, the University Council adopted a resolution entitled the “Compact for Responsible Scholarship.” The compact is a non-binding reference for students and teachers to use in communicating their expectations.

It is the result of a joint effort between the Student Government Association and the UGA Teaching Academy.

The expectation for faculty to “return work in a timely manner” is one of the elements of the contract.

“We wanted to make sure we could foster a more collaborative environment in the classroom,” said Connor McCarthy, a former Student Government Association president who worked on the contract last year. “It’s really just a way to facilitate expectations.”

Jeffrey Dorfman, the co-chair of the committee, said more awareness and use of the compact on the part of the faculty could help solve the problem Biringer addressed. Dorfman suggested encouraging faculty to link to the compact on their syllabi and discuss it with students at the beginning of the semester.

“I think that might make most of the problem go away,” he said. “You need to persuade the faculty rather than regulate.”

Some faculty did not address the compact with their students this year.

“It completely slipped my mind this semester,” said Stephen Rathbun, an associate professor of biostatistics.

Other measures are also in place to help the students make withdrawal decisions.

The committee has already pushed the withdrawal deadline back two weeks in order to give students time to evaluate their status in the class after the midpoint of the semester.

“It seems like, to whatever extent we can, we’ve tried to solve the problem in good faith,” said Rodney Mauricio, an associate professor of genetics. But the committee has heard the students’ concerns.

“The committee is in sympathy with the students,” Dorfman said. “Work that has been done should be graded and returned to students in a timely manner. I don’t think any of us object to that.”