My department is going through an administrative process of constructive alignment. It has somehow morphed into a massive debate about participation marks, which I have on a couple of my modules. These are not ill thought through on my part and I find them useful for motivating students to learn throughout the 20 weeks of the module. I have processes to make them as fair as I can etc etc. I'm reasonably new to academia (4 years of teaching here) but have been in education since 2001, so I'm not inexperienced. Anyway, a lot of the debate centres around my modules in particular and various forms have gone to various committees. My question is, outside of the Excel spreadsheet I'm asked to hand in, can I speak to an academic committee? I have not been able to participate in the debate, and only really know about it because a colleague challenged my HOD on something he'd said about me as being disrespectful. My line manager has said she will support me keeping the marks, but I can tell she would prefer I got rid of them.
The whole thing has made me feel extremely paranoid. I now know who is on the committee and am wondering if I can email them directly so I can explain myself.
Does this seem like a terrible idea?