Michelle Dion offers some sound advice to those instructors who want to reduce student lobbying for grade changes, inspired partially by this WaPo op-ed from earlier in the month.

I think a well-defined, clear grading policy is key; while I don’t do everything Michelle does (I don’t have enough time in my life to track attendance, and anonymous grading is unlikely to work in small classes anyway—even if I had the TA support to do it), I always make it clear at the outset what assignments are worth. It doesn’t eliminate the complaints, and sometimes I do make clerical errors that would lead to legitimate complaints anyway, but it does reduce them somewhat.