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What happens when even professors have to much power?February 5th, 2008

Okay,

I would say the plight of many of us is that we’re the little guy. Am I right? Most of the time, our voice isn’t heard among the crowd, and we don’t have a million dollars to buy a podium to stand on. But what happens when just a little power goes a little too far? Well, I’m glad you asked (or I asked), since that’s exactly what happened here at Taylor.

To save some privacy we’ll call the people involved Professor R and TM (my friend). R decided to screw the 2D Design class from last fall. His attendance policy word for word:

Missing more than 10% of class meetings (3 classes) results in the reduction of the final grade by a letter grade, and will continue as such until the sixth absence.

To anyone casually reading this policy it seems that more than 3 classes missed results in a letter grade. However, R’s interpretation of this is that missing more than 10% of class (for example, 3 classes) is a letter grade reduction. In addition, this is not in keeping with Taylor’s policy of one absence per credit hour.

Those are the facts. Cold hard solid facts.

Now, the non-facts. No, the opinions and whys of the situation have yet to be explained to you or to the administration staff. For ease, I will just list these.

1. TM needs a 3.15 GPA to keep a scholarship. He would have had a 3.31 if R hadn’t deducted a letter grade and a half for attendance. TM has a 2.97 and would get a 3.17 with a letter grade addition (per in keeping with TU policy).
2. I was deducted two full letter grades for four absences (mind you this is a meet twice a week for two hour course), and went from an A- to a C-.
3. The class itself has no inherent value system for attendance. Most class days were half an hour of R talking followed by up to 1.5 hours of working on projects in class. Projects that were explicitly designed to be worked on outside of class. Thus, there was no added value to being in class. A class with inherent value could be described as one where not being there to learn the content would result in letter grade loss not only from attendance, but from quality of projects. There was little to no content on most days of the course.
4. We were given one quiz the entire course long. Actually, it was the same quiz, but given multiple times (including on our final day). This was the culmination of it: 10 principles of design and their definitions, 5 elements of design. It was a memorization quiz. You memorize a sheet of paper, and spit back the same thing on a blank sheet. I can tell you maybe 5 principles and no elements that I remember now. Memorization over long periods of time can help in long term acquisition of information. However, we were made to do short term memorization multiple times which does not lend itself to setting in long term memory.
5. The long and short argument is that the policy does not match the reasoning behind it: that class time adds value to our learning experience. I learned less in 2D Design than in any other class at Taylor. Design principles (used in every day life masquerading with different names) were easily forgotten. If we didn’t go to class, we were not judged on quality of our artistic creations, but on whether we were in class. In essence, on the scales, being in class was more important to R than doing the work for class. However, being in class for anyone there had less intrinsic value than doing the work directed for class.

Okay, so the first two are factual, but they are also a point that we did not make because they describe situations based on hypothetical circumstances. And, that about wraps up the argument.

So the next time someone shallow and overbearing tries to put the power hold on you, don’t let them. You have a voice to fight back with, so let it be heard. Anyway, I hope the illustration helped.