No insights on this to share as my D who is graduating doesn’t really mention her peers’ grades and she’s never brought up overall campus GPAs.
If there was a decision to ‘loosen up’ on grades it wasn’t made public – I’m sure I would have heard about that because I regularly read the college newspaper. My supposition would be that this is somehow a reflection of new faculty alongside retirement of older faculty, possibly combined with the pandemic. But I have no inside information.
Grades aside, Davidson is certainly rigorous and expectations are high.