On the OU philosophy paper scandal

[Blurb]

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.

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.

 

[ChapelHillSooner]

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.

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.

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.

Challenging a zero is one thing. Going to the media and TPUSA is a very different ballgame.

 

[superrific]

That's a solid answer. I'm not sure that was possible in this specific case though. Wasn't the TA the instructor?

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.

 

[superrific]

The OU TA was fired because she created a headache for the university. .

Nope. She was fired because she was trans, and because stupid evangelicals did their victimization thing yet again.

If the instructor was a dude and it was a woman citing Bible passages to randomly inveigh against capital punishment nobody gets fired. 100%.

 

[UNCatTech]

Y'all, I once got a 15/100 on an exam, which was a solid A and the second highest score in the class. The mean was like -11 or something.

I recall many exams like that. Most of my major classes graded on a curve.

 

[superrific]

I recall many exams like that. Most of my major classes graded on a curve.

You recall a negative mean? I've never heard of it except that one class.

 

[Willy]

Its why I preferred math and science in school. In most cases, the answers were either right or wrong. You didn't need to rely on someone's subjective opinion to get a grade.

Then you get out in the real world and you need to figure out quickly that someone's subjective opinion is what is most important in your life.

My biggest post-college wtf moment was realizing that in business, you “plagiarize” daily. Presenting a memo to committee for credit approval? Use the notes on the company from the prior approval package. Duh.

 

[superrific]

I was electrical engineering.

Was the magic the phasor stuff? AC analysis makes heavy use of Euler’s formula which certainly looks like magic when you first encounter it. Then it is like everything is done in the frequency domain.

The funny thing is that with some things I have gained a deeper understanding over the years even though I do no EE. Like I was never 100% convinced that the whole treatment of Euler’s formula was valid though I obviously knew it was. Specifically the validity of dropping the imaginary part at the end seemed troubling but really only because the circuit textbook was not a math textbook and didn’t fully investigate the validity of that step. Later I learned that you can prove that that is valid as long as the elements are linear.

Just little things that are fundamental that you don’t always have the time to dig super deep - unless you are just super smart and can absorb it quickly.

Euler's formula is just a math identity. I don't know what you mean by "treatment" of it.

"Dropping the imaginary term" is simply projecting the entire signal onto the real domain -- i.e. the domain with physical meaning. In quantum mechanics, a similar step is done with a complex exponential that is often found attached to the wave function.

The wave function is theoretical scaffolding -- you never see it, but you can't conceptualize the theory without it (well, you can represent the theory with an alternative representation but it amounts to the same thing). So too with phasors. The imaginary part is a scaffolding. You can never see it on its own, but you can see its interactions with other imaginary terms in non-linear systems.

 

[gtyellowjacket]

My biggest post-college wtf moment was realizing that in business, you “plagiarize” daily. Presenting a memo to committee for credit approval? Use the notes on the company from the prior approval package. Duh.

I remember early in my career where the employees of the company had to do some training for regulatory purposes. Then we had to do a basic test to be sure you absorbed the material. My boss got everyone together to do it and check the box so we could get back to work. I remember being appalled that were cheating on a "test." I laugh about it now.

 

[Blurb]

Teaching trans topics is undoubtedly the proximate cause of the TA’s firing, but it argue that it is a part of a larger pattern of administrators firing people for anything that riles up conservative public opinion.

The firing of the academics who commented on Charlie Kirk’s death are an example of the broader dynamic.

6 More Faculty, Staff Removed for Kirk Comments

Republican politicians and other conservatives are calling for employees, including those in higher ed, to be terminated for their social media posts about Kirk's killing.

www.insidehighered.com

Administrators feel (rightfully) that the Universities are under attack and have decided to take an appeasement strategy. In this environment, they often fire first and deal with the consequences later.

In my experience, college is very different now.

 

[UNCatTech]

You recall a negative mean? I've never heard of it except that one class.

No.

The lowest I can recall was a 9 on an exam that I made a 22 on. I was amazed that I received an A on an exam that I did so poorly on. For me, it was a struggle to learn to not let my grade affect me, until I knew the mean and the curve.

But, one thing that they loved at Tech was exams that no one could finish, so even on that test, part of why my grade was so law was that I didn't finish.

 

[heelinhell]

Many years ago, I recall a UNC-W math prof being fired for giving 98% of his class A's for their final grade. I found that to be interesting.

Why would you fire a math prof where 98% of his students excelled ?

 

[donbosco]

Teaching trans topics is undoubtedly the proximate cause of the TA’s firing, but it argue that it is a part of a larger pattern of administrators firing people for anything that riles up conservative public opinion.

The firing of the academics who commented on Charlie Kirk’s death are an example of the broader dynamic.

6 More Faculty, Staff Removed for Kirk Comments

Republican politicians and other conservatives are calling for employees, including those in higher ed, to be terminated for their social media posts about Kirk's killing.

www.insidehighered.com

Administrators feel (rightfully) that the Universities are under attack and have decided to take an appeasement strategy. In this environment, they often fire first and deal with the consequences later.

In my experience, college is very different now.

My point back on page one exactly.

Politics Post in thread 'On the OU philosophy paper scandal'

Saturday at 7:18 AM

The ways that a teacher of today must comport themself are very different from what they were even a decade ago. Language use must be precise and the bigger picture must always be weighed out carefully. The entire scheme of things can be likened to a war rather than a battle in which the maxim "“He who fights and runs away may live to fight another day” is a motto to live by. If one's greatest goal is to educate and enlighten, introduce ideas and spur critical thinking, to the greatest number of the reachable then skirmishes need to be carefully calculated so as not to be eliminated from...

• donbosco

• 

 

[uncleradar]

I have a relative with a PhD in Finance who has taught for many years at a major university. While in grad school he was hired to teach a remedial business course at a private college that catered to rich kids. After a month he was fired. It turned out that he felt the students needed to learn calculus before they could understand finance.

 

[05C40]

I have a relative with a PhD in Finance who has taught for many years at a major university. While in grad school he was hired to teach a remedial business course at a private college that catered to rich kids. After a month he was fired. It turned out that he felt the students needed to learn calculus before they could understand finance.

IIRC, back in the day, both business and accounting majors at Carolina had to take, as a requirement for their major, Math 31, 32, 33, & 34. Definitely accounting, maybe business.

 

[Blurb]

My point back on page one exactly.

Yup, rather eloquently put too!

 

[kickazzz2000]

IIRC, back in the day, both business and accounting majors at Carolina had to take, as a requirement for their major, Math 31, 32, 33, & 34. Definitely accounting, maybe business.

When was this? I remember there being a Math 22 when I was there in the 90s

 

[Zoo_View]

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.

I had a history teacher in 11th grade. Great teacher, wonderful lecturer, skilled at spurring student comments. Beloved by students. She assigned two 2-3 page papers each week. Due Tuesdays and Fridays. If she hadn’t graded Tuesday’s paper by Friday, you didn’t have to turn in Friday’s. She always had the previous papers graded.

And, she marked up papers. Red ink everywhere. Especially on “A” papers. Also, why you were dinged.

If you didn’t turn a paper in on time, you got a ZERO.

Great teacher.

 

[Zoo_View]

When was this? I remember there being a Math 22 when I was there in the 90s

Math 31, 32, 33, 34 (and maybe 30) were Calculus and Differential Equations classes in the mid-‘80’s.

I don’t think class numbers or names had changed much since the late ‘60’s (maybe earlier). My Dad taught a hard science “11” (intro class) since 1967 and well into the late ‘80’s, if not early ‘90’s.

 

[UNCatTech]

I had a history teacher in 11th grade. Great teacher, wonderful lecturer, skilled at spurring student comments. Beloved by students. She assigned two 2-3 page papers each week. Due Tuesdays and Fridays. If she hadn’t graded Tuesday’s paper by Friday, you didn’t have to turn in Friday’s. She always had the previous papers graded.

And, she marked up papers. Red ink everywhere. Especially on “A” papers. Also, why you were dinged.

If you didn’t turn a paper in on time, you got a ZERO.

Great teacher.

At Tech if something was due at midnight it had to be submitted or a zero. One second after and you couldn't submit.

I took a core class over the summer at another state accredited school that was closer to my home.

We had an assignment that I stayed up all night completing. Sorting class than next day the girl beside me had not completed it, she told the teacher and the teacher said to turn it in the next class, I almost fell out of my seat.

When we got the assignment back I recieved an A, but it was a low A, the girl got a B, I still debated complaining since she got two extra days. That wasn't accepted at tech.