I have to comment after reading the Sun Journal story, “Changing EL grades?” (June 6).

Years ago, when I was an assistant professor at MIT ( I retired in 1971), I encountered a friend en route to his office. He was laughing, so I asked why, and he told me he was returning from “The Annual Feeding of Fogies” — his name for MIT’s annual luncheon for faculty who were senior in age. The assistant provost had presented his new plan for grading freshmen students — pass/fail. Another “fogy” in the group shouted at an especially superannuated retiree who had evidently shut off his hearing aids. “Fay,” he called, “tell us about grading when you first came here.”

Fay, initially flustered, tuned in his hearing aids and answered:

“At first we had two grades: ‘pass’ and ‘fail;’ but after a while, the students who did well complained that they weren’t given recognition. So we switched to ‘pass with distinction,’ ‘pass’ and ‘fail.’ After a little while, the students with top performance complained that their performance was not recognized. And so it went.

“Finally we adopted a grading system of A, B, C, D and F. Just a little later, we added FF — ‘fail and not allowed register at MIT again.’ A little later we converted the A through F grades to 5, 4, 3, 2 and 0, but the FF remained, with its name.”

Charles Berg, Buckfield