Monday, June 8, 2015

College Professors Are Scared to Death of their Students. A Linked Article With No Commentary. Because, Well, Jet Lag?

“I once saw an adjunct not get his contract renewed after students complained that he exposed them to 'offensive' texts written by Edward Said and Mark Twain. His response, that the texts were meant to be a little upsetting, only fueled the students’ ire and sealed his fate."

8 comments:

  1. So true. Last week I told a student to use the honor principle, and he complained and my department Chair and Dean took turns sodomizing me with a cattle prod, even though I'm a tenured full professor. What really gets me is that these bumblefucks could fuck up a wet dream, but they always have fresh batteries for the cattle prod. Oh well, this is Fresno State. And they never have Vaseline, either.

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    1. Oh, all right. I confess I (gasp!) USED SARCASM. Owowowow-owowow...

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    2. Twitch.

      The batteries are always fresh because the nice administrative assistants see to it. Vaseline is the purview of the chemical stock room, whose job is to say "we have trouble keeping that in stock" for the more popular stuff.

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    3. I don't understand what happened. Why exactly did the student complain? What did using the honor principle really mean? I understand that the student must have been told to be honest and fair even though nobody was going to watch or verify. But how does that explain the complaint? If anything, not being trusted or permitted to make decisions could be something to complain about, not the opposite.

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    4. @Monica: Yup, you read that right. It really is that ridiculous. The one thing my administration can be relied upon, aside from covering their own backsides, is taking any bait, no matter how contrived.

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  2. I began the article, and I started thinking "If we can't make them a little uncomfortable, how will we teach them anything?" and then "they're going to be running things in the not-distant-enough future" and then "I don't want to live on this planet anymore."

    I'll have to read more later.

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    1. Given that report, I'm not sure I want to start reading. Maybe later.

      And to think I was once a bleeding-heart liberal (and still am, to a considerable extent. But I'm also pretty close to a free-speech absolutist, and more than a little inclined to the "sticks and stones. . ." school of thought).

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    2. Those of us who have reason to mention evolution in our classes have the pit of our stomachs clenching in dread---or maybe that's an after-effect of this morning's cattle prod.

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