New York University officials, taking extraordinary measures to cope with academic disruptions caused by the graduate student strike, have said they would relax the school’s grading policy this fall semester.

With some undergraduate classes thrown into disarray by the strike, which began more than two weeks ago and could last until the end of the semester, NYU officials have decided that a normal grading policy wouldn’t be tenable.

Students whose classes have been disrupted by the strike now have the option of being graded on a special pass/fail basis, deleting the class from their transcripts, or taking it again in a subsequent semester at the university’s expense.

Hundreds of graduate student teaching assistants at NYU are estimated to have gone on strike November 9 because the administration refused to recognize their union. Since then, the university has had to manage without many of the people who grade student exams and papers, lead discussion sections, and, in some cases, particularly in low-level foreign language courses, teach classes.

While NYU has tried to soften the impact of the strike by shifting the teaching assistant duties to full-time faculty members and by even offering extra tutoring services for students, the strike appears to have taken a toll on undergraduate education.

University officials insist that the strike did not affect the vast majority of undergraduate classes but say they do not have exact figures on the number of classes disrupted. Departments have refused to report to the administration exact numbers of striking teaching assistants, and some graduate students, who have said they are striking, have continued to hold classes or discussion sections at off-campus locations.

About 1,000 graduate students serve as teaching assistants during a semester. The union organizing the strike, the United Automobile Workers, has claimed that a majority of the teaching assistants has gone on strike, but NYU officials have disputed that figure.

A vocal supporter of the strike, Andrew Ross, a professor of comparative literature, said the exigency plan “suggests that the administration is very concerned about the impact of the strike and is, in fact, willing to spend a lot of university money in trying to counteract the consequences.”

The special grading policy seems to be targeted at students who have expressed concern about how they are going to complete courses without the help of teaching assistants or be assigned fair grades.

NYU is allowing undergraduates whose classes have been disrupted to choose a pass/fail mark on their transcript at any point for the remainder of the semester, which ends in mid-December, even after they receive their grades for the class. The normal last day for filing for a pass/fail was October 11, a little more than a month into the semester.

For those students, the university will note on their transcripts that the pass/fail option was “exercised in the special circumstances of a graduate assistant job action,” according to a memo the administration distributed to faculty and students detailing the special policy.

Students may also choose to withdraw and have the class deleted from their transcripts. Under normal cir cumstances, students who withdraw receive a mark of “W,” which is typically viewed as a blemish on transcripts. The deadline for withdrawing had been September 27.

NYU has also said it would allow undergraduates to retake a class at no extra charge, offering vouchers for a comparable number of course credits that students may use within one year. If students transferred to another university within that time frame, they could still use the vouchers for similar classes.

NYU’s provost, David McLaughlin, in an interview with The New York Sun, said only students who are enrolled in classes affected by the strike could exercise those special grading options, and they must first get permission from the particular department head or dean. In most cases, he said, the students would receive the benefit of the doubt.

“We will lean toward the students’ self-evaluation,” he said.