Fifty-Something College Student Can’t Fathom Why His "Hot-For-Teacher" Essay Upset His Hot Teacher
Joseph Corlett is 56 years old. And Joseph Corlett attends Oakland University in Rochester, Mich. Well, he did attend that esteemed academy. Seems as if the university elders and others just didn't get an essay he wrote for "Advanced Critical Writing" class.
The assignment, per Mr. Corlett: Write creatively about any topic in a day book.
The result: A journal entry titled "Hot for Teacher," based on the Van Halen song.
The treasure above says this in the video: "I described her with 9 different words. Two of the words were articulate and smart, I believe, and I don’t think creeps usually go for the mind thing. I think they pretty much stick to the body parts."
ReplyDeleteWell, he's the exception that proves the rule. I would tase him if he came within my reach.
Sounds like somebody will be adding the following to her sentence next semester:
ReplyDelete"While some assignments may allow you to choose your topics, please refrain from writing about subjects which fall outside the boundaries of basic human decency. If you are unsure of where those boundaries lie, please come see me before writing your assignment."
The man has posted a spectacular train-wreck of a thread about his grievances at the Chronicle.
ReplyDeleteHe has, to put it mildly, entitlement issues.
DeleteLet me be clear up front: I am not defending this guy. It seems like he overstepped several lines between what could have been a good-natured ironic response and something that is outright sexist and inflammatory.
ReplyDeleteStill, I've turned away from these kinds of open-ended writing prompts for this very reason. I'm still haunted by an undergraduate essay that I wrote in response to a write-on-whatever-you-want prompt. I was 17, and I attempted something humorous. It didn't work well. The professor was gracious enough to overlook my topic so that he could grade the structure of my argument (it was a comp class). I'm eternally grateful to him, and eternally horrified by my immaturity.
In any case, I'm not the best composition teacher in the world, so I won't go so far as to say that these kinds of prompts are entirely worthless. But I've tried variations of them enough times to know that they at least don't jive with my course goals, so I've abandoned them altogether. I think there's a way to write reasonably open prompts that don't result in this kind of thing and that don't have to employ the infantilizing restrictions that BB cites.
Douchebag. And that's the friendliest insult I can think of.
ReplyDeleteI think his handling of the suspension speaks volumes about the kind of guy he is.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly tells you why his instructor was creeped out.
DeleteI really doubt, given the punishment, that this was his first offense.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the fact that he doesn't just WANT to crawl away in mortification tells me he is actually getting off on all of the attention and power he now perceives that he has.
DeleteI am thinking there is more to the story, but as for the offense....It seems (I was interested enough in this to spend time reading different things about it) that his prof did not tell him to stop. The documents he submitted had a "pretend" interaction with the prof where he imagined she would tell him to stop, but in actuality, what she did (about this particular thing) was to report him.
ReplyDeleteI dunno. In my state, at least, you have to tell them to stop, and only if they don't can you make a claim of sexual harassment. At least this is true when the behavior could possibly be considered in somebody's eyes as acceptable. And in a creative writing class....I just don't know what I think about the way this was handled.
Before I learned to completely quash it through the syllabus and directly on assignments where there might seem to be wiggle room, I got essays with lots of sexual things, including one where the writer was imagining sex with me. I read only a few sentences of that one, returned it, and told the student never to do that again. She never did. Another time a student wanted to write about body piercings in sexual places. He made quite an argument about why he ought to be able to write about that. I told him I just did not want to read his descriptions, and that as far as the class assignments were concerned, I was God. He dropped it. I wonder if this guy would have dropped it, if given the chance. I also wonder what else there is to this story.
You know, it's impossible to know what went on, because the instructor and uni would violate FERPA if they say anything. The instructor might be inexperienced and went to a supervisor, and the supervisor went up the chain. The instructor might have been fearful about the student. OR it's possible that she didn't read the first assignment much at all (you know - we've ALL done that) and didn't notice the details until the second assignment. Basically I can imagine a pile of scenarios. But either way, this guy is a major league creeper and I don't blame the uni for unloading him.
DeleteIf Oakland State is like many of our fine institutions, if anything they bent over backwards to try to find a way to avoid punishing this customer, er, student. The fact that they actually did something says to me that they had no alternative because he'd established a pattern of egregious behavior that would have made the professor's lawsuit more successful than his will be.
ReplyDelete