As to worrying about keeping kids out of grad or professional. But at least with law school, the most important thing is the LSAT score. The GPA is less of a concern. I can see that a person in the first six years of teaching would feel these pressures tremendously. The point about students from other institutions being treated better because they might have received higher grades is a legitimate one.
Some medical schools use numbers more than letters of recommendation for the first cut.
That can be serious. We may have better students with lower grades than some institutions with higher grades. In other fields this is not so serious, because letters still count for something. Grade inflation is a common problem and we all know it - and, there is no easy answer. I think Grade Inflation has occurred to some extent at Juniata.