Strongly agree with allowing opt-out. My preferred implementation would be for this semester to be CR/NC by default but, unlike the first semester, to allow students to uncover shadow grades.

Given that many graduate programs want to see specific grades in specific classes, and having an extra semester of letter grades may be important for first-years applying for summer opportunities next year (since, if we have two semesters of mandatory CR/NC, we'll have letter grades only from Fall 2020), I think there are significant harms associated with mandatory CR/NC here, especially because students obviously weren't aware this was going to happen prior to course registration.

Obviously, there are some equity concerns involved since some students will be more or less able to earn higher grades this semester (hence why CR/NC is a good idea in the first place), I think giving the option of uncovering while making CR/NC the default probably minimizes overall harms.

Fully aware that self-reporting is a thing and that Swarthmore will uncover shadow grades when absolutely required by other institutions, but for a number of reasons these don't fully fix the above issues.