On the OU philosophy paper scandal

ChapelHillSooner said:
But is the distinction between a 0% and a 20% which is clearly a judgement call worth the firing of a TA?

Is that really where we are? Would anyone argue over such things if 1) the Bible was not referenced and 2) the TA was not trans?

Even if there was a wrong (which is debatable), is the remedy appropriate?

I don’t think anyone could argue that it was.
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I’m not defending OU in the slightest, but I would 100% percent expect a premed student to challenge a 0 on submitted work.

I had a student go to my chair because she was upset that I didn’t accept her work turned in after the course was over and I had submitted final grades.

The OU TA was fired because she created a headache for the university. Many administrators only care about PR and expect faculty to keep things quiet even if they have to self censor.

They also don’t worry about things like policy and procedure.

If they want you gone, they just order you to do harder and harder things until you refuse, then fire you for insubordination.
 
Blurb said:
That’s interesting. What level do you teach?

I’ve embraced a bit of a Pavlovian approach where I give them immediate 0s on their missed work in the first/second week of class with no makeups. It craters their overall average in the LMS, which at that point is meaningless given over 98% of the work is yet to come, but tends to wake up some students about the consequences of missing work.
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Reminds me of something that happened to my brother in high school. My brother was basically a straight A student. I did better at math then he did (though he made A’s) but he is far more well rounded.

Our HS baseball team was playing in the state tournament (top 8 in that division) and it was held on the other side of the state. First game was a Thursday afternoon game. Students who wanted to attend the game were excused from class on Thursday. Had we won they would have been excused on Friday as well. We lost and my brother and his friends stayed there and didn’t make it to class on Friday. The English teacher gave them all a zero for missing Friday’s class. The handbook said that a zero shall be entered for the daily garage for any unexcused absence. The problem was that his class that nine weeks only had a half dozen grades. So you add a zero on top of that and an A is virtually impossible. (Maybe not for the semester which is what really counts but for the 9 weeks grade it was.). He argued that the handbook clearly mentions a daily grade and there was no intent to have such a punitive measure for classes that only have a few graded assignments.

That really sucked for him. I don’t know how that ended up.
Blurb said:
I’m not defending OU in the slightest, but I would 100% percent expect a premed student to challenge a 0 on submitted work.

I had a student go to my chair because she was upset that I didn’t accept her work turned in after the course was over and I had submitted final grades.

The OU TA was fired because she created a headache for the university. Many administrators only care about PR and expect faculty to keep things quiet even if they have to self censor.

They also don’t worry about things like policy and procedure.

If they want you gone, they just order you to do harder and harder things until you refuse, then fire you for insubordination.
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Challenging a zero is one thing. Going to the media and TPUSA is a very different ballgame.
 
donbosco said:
That's a solid answer. I'm not sure that was possible in this specific case though. Wasn't the TA the instructor?
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No idea. It's a solid answer in hindsight. Easy to say. Especially easy once the alternative has been presented. Doubtful the TA thought she was going to get fired.
 
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