A Year in Lubbock: Academics, post 3
Dan Hillman
pieces.]
Not that she was trying to, of course. She'd been pestering my dean for
days, trying to get in and bitch about how mean I was being to her
darling little son. A couple of hours after I reported all the
computer/record problems, the dean met with MomX.
God, I wish I could have been there. Apparently, the conversation went
something like this:
MomX [righteously indignant]: Your professor Hillman is completely
out of line....
Dean [perfectly calm]: Well, frankly, I'm not nearly as worried
about my professor as I am about the fact that your son appears to
have dropped out of school. (Technically, it was illegal for her to
say anything about the boy, but she figured it was worth a shot.)
MomX falls back in shock and horror. Instinctively she clutches for
her cell phone, and calls sonny boy, right then and there: "Son, the
dean just told me that you've dropped out of school! Is this true?"
If sonny had had any balls or brains, he'd have said, "Yep. Sorry I
forgot to tell you, Mom," and the whole thing would have ended right
then. But he didn't, so he feigned ignorance. "Of course not! What
are you talking about?" And off he went to re-enroll.
By the time the dean had finished swallowing the rest of her canary, MrX
was re-enrolled, and the next day I had the satisfaction of flunking
him.
Shame it didn't last, though.
I did what I supposed to do next, which was paperwork. I learned
firsthand why administrators all over the country are throwing their
hands over their eyes and ears when professors report plagiarism or
other cheating: Because dealing with it's a bitch.
I had done the first required bit, which was to confront the student;
and, after more effort than one would expect, I'd managed to flunk his
sorry ass. Next I wrote up my allegations, and pulled together all the
supporting materials, such as copies of the papers he'd given me and the
originals he'd "allegedly" stolen them from; then I met with half the
universe to distribute the stuff. Then, MrX got to write his response,
and I had to do a rebuttal to that. Rinse, repeat.
The best part of his response was when he repeatedly quoted another
student in the course as to how terrible I was, and only identified her
as his mommy at the end. Fucking hell; how pathetic is it to be hiding
behind your mom's skirts when you're 25 years old?
The only cool thing was that all of the administrators I was dealing
with kept apologizing to me, saying what a shame it was that such a
terrible thing had happened my very first year. I kept a mental score
card of how many years they'd mention: "Why, I've been a professor for
27 (or 19, or 7) years, and I've never seen such an egregious case."
While all this was going on, of course, MomX was still circling like
some sort of demented, wannabe shark, complaining to everyone about how
terrible I was, starting all sorts of rumors about how I was going to be
sued by half the university, etc. The ObChattel did have a good
conversation with LawyerBoy (whose office was next door), who told her
that MomX had come ranting to him about me and yelling that the Health
Sciences school was going to sue me if I didn't lay off her son (since
that's where his co-authors worked). LawyerBoy had apparently tried to
calm her by explaining that no, the Health Sciences Center wasn't going
to sue anybody. Oh, yes they were, she asserted. No, they won't, he
repeated, because I am the attorney for them as well as the university,
and as such I would be the one filing such a suit. And I have no plans
to do that.
She didn't like that, and flounced off.
The grade appeal committee finally met, in mid-August, to hear MrX's
case. By that time, I was beyond sick of the whole mess, and I figured
that they probably would be too by the time they finished reading all
the relevant paperwork. So, I decided to do them the courtesy of not
wasting their time by rehashing the stuff in person.
This turned out to be a mistake.
The committee meeting must have been a real scream. MrX appeared in his
own defense, of course. (He'd actually gone so far as to try and get his
mother in as a witness, as just another student in the course, but
mercifully that was quashed.) However, Author3 spoke, as did some
seemingly random professor from the engineering school. Amazingly,
Author3 stood up and said that it was true, that MrX had in fact done
all the work on the paper, and that he and Author1 had just signed their
names to it. But, he added, this is standard procedure in academia in
general and certainly at TTU, so it's okay. The engineering guy then
stood up and agreed with him, saying that this was perfectly acceptable
behavior.
Who was this masked engineering guy, you ask? We did, and we found out;
he'd been seen squiring MomX around the town at various social
occasions. Uh-huh.
A week after the committee met I was given a report of their decision.
In the first case, of the paper copied from Wired, they upheld the zero
I'd given him but they declared that it was not a case of plagiarism,
because they accepted his statement that he hadn't meant to plagiarize.
The official code of conduct says nothing about intent, of course, but
that didn't stop them from inventing a new rule for themselves.
In the case of the research paper, they really got creative. They held
that MrX had indeed done all the work on the paper, and since it is
impossible to plagiarize from oneself, they did not uphold my grade of
zero. However, they did agree that the paper failed to meet the criteria
of the assignment, as I had originally pointed out. Hence, their
Solomonic decision: MrX would have to rewrite the paper to make it fit
the assignment. Since my objectivity was clearly gone, two other
professors in the department would grade it. If this sounds familiar, it
should, since it's the same deal I had originally offered MrX before I
found out that the paper had been plagiarized, and which he'd turned
down.
But wait, here's the best part. In their great wisdom, the committee
also ruled that the boy's grade status should be changed, from that of
regular grading to pass/fail. So, the fact that they'd upheld the zero
on the first assignment suddenly becomes irrelevant; instead of his GPA
taking a hit, MrX simply gets a nice neat Pass for the course. There's
no record of this little unpleasantness, of course, so he gets away
clean.
Yes, you read that right: This sack of shit was caught twice,
red-handed, committing the single worst crime in academia, and yet he
walked.
Admittedly, the committee didn't actually have the authority to change
his grade status, any more than they could rewrite the definition of
plagiarism, but they didn't let a little thing like university policy
stand in their way.
I've read that report many times, trying to understand: What were these
people thinking? Did they really just fail to get it? Did MomX get to
them somehow, and threaten that the chancelllllor would get them in the
dead of night if they didn't let her pwecious sonnykins go? Or,
something which didn't occur to me then but has since been suggested,
did they sincerely think that it would hurt the poor lad to actually be
punished, that he'd suffered enough and surely he'd learned his lesson?
Or, to put it another way, were they (a) incomprehensibly stupid, (b)
pathetically corrupt, or (c) too soft-head^Hrted to "hurt" the kid by
giving him what he deserves?
Having spent a year there, my money's on incomprehensibly stupid. My
favorite bit in the committee's report was that they failed to notice
that the kid had contradicted himself in his written response and oral
testimony.
Written: I understood the assignment to be "get something off the
internet on a legal issue," not "do something on the
internet and a legal issue." Therefore, I pulled an article
off of the internet and copied it for the class...My name
on the cover sheet was simply an identification of the
person handing in to the instructor an article taken
directly from the internet."
Oral: "We can accept that [MrX] thought the assignment was to be
an oral assignment only. Thus, when he was instructed to
turn in these notes as the written assignment, [MrX]
quickly typed a cover sheet in class."
But, when it came down to it, I decided that it didn't even matter which
was true. I simply wanted nothing more to do with the sort of cretinous,
ethically handicapped fuckchops who could come up with a decision like
this. Ever. Mind-numbingly dull courses and grade hyperinflation are one
thing; but flat disregard for even the most basic level of ethics is
another.
I got the committee's report just as the ObChattel and I were about to
go away for a week with friends. We spent some long hours talking during
that week, and when we got back at the end of August, I met with the
interim dean and gave him my resignation letter. (Our real dean had
decided she wanted a vacation -- wonder why? -- and some guy was filling
in as interim dean.) Being a softy, and figuring that I'd rather pack
and start my job-hunt on TTU's dime, I said that this would be my last
semester there. I figured that even if they were fuckwads, it wasn't
right to leave 'em with my courses on such short notice. More to the
point, it wasn't fair to the students, who'd be the ones who'd really
get screwed.
I wasn't done yet, though. I wrote to the Dean of Students (DOS) that
MrX was guilty of two counts of academic misconduct. Though I was
heartily sick of the whole damn business, this was the last hoop I had
to jump through, just so that I could know that I'd done everything I
possibly could.
Since by this point I'd caught on to the prevailing standards of ethics
and intellect, I wasn't expecting much, and that's pretty much what I
got. I wrote up my position yet again, and sent in the report to the
DOS. He sent a couple of tough-sounding letters to MrX, telling him to
show up or be screwed, but as I'd come to expect, when it came to
actually doing anything he threw up his hands and said that since the
grade appeal committee had been satisfied, there was nothing he could
do.
Upon receiving his pathetic little whine of a memo, I admit I got a bit
peevish. So I walked over to his office and asked his secretary for an
appointment to see him in person. As she set up the time, she asked what
it was about. I snapped, "Because I want to know what the hell was going
through his mind when he made this decision."
As I entered the DOS's waiting room a few days later, one of the new
associate deans in my college was already there. He explained that he'd
been asked to attend the meeting. Wondering if he was there to see if I
was a complete wacko or just as a bodyguard for the dean, I made awkward
small talk as we cooled our heels.
Things started off with a minor bang, because the DOS was cranky that
I'd expressed my obvious displeasure with him in front of other people.
He went on for a few minutes before I deadpanned, "I won't do it again."
Sure, it was a cheap shot, but it was a full three seconds before he did
the doubletake.
Anyhow, the DOS's whole argument was that I should have come to him
earlier, and that since so much time had passed there wasn't anything he
could do anymore. Setting aside the obvious fact that it wasn't my fault
the grade appeal committee sat on the whole matter for four months, I
asked him how long TTU's statute of limitations on plagiarism was. He
spluttered and said indignantly that there wasn't one, of course. I
patiently pointed out the inherent contradiction in what he'd just said,
and after four or five times he got it. He smiled weakly.
The rest of the meeting was just as useless.
After the meeting, I walked back to the College of Education with the
associate dean, who insisted on telling me that the professors on the
grade appeal committee were people of the greatest integrity.
I disagreed, explaining that they could have only missed MrX's
contradictions if they were stupid or dishonest, but whichever it was, I
was glad that I had resigned because I didn't want to work with them.
He gave me a look of shock and horror, and then tried a new tack: Surely
I could agree that MrX had learned from this whole experience, right?
I stopped walking. "Yeah. He's learned plenty. He's learned that even if
he gets caught plagiarizing red-handed, soft-hearted professors will let
him go. He's learned that if his mom goes around invoking the
chancellor's name that he gets off. And when he gets caught again -- and
he will -- they'll look through his records and find no history of this.
He'll be a first offender. Yeah, he's learned a lot. And so have I. And
that's why I resigned."
A couple of weeks before I left, I had my exit interview with the
interim dean. Before the meeting, I was supposed to fill out a standard
university form, asking if I'd ever been discriminated against,
improvements the university could make, and things like that. I filled
it out honestly. The highlights:
Reasons for leaving:
1. The futility of trying to educate students who are patently not
prepared to do graduate work.
2. Being required to teach high-school-level course material in
graduate courses.
3. Having been coerced to participate in rampant grade inflation.
4. Isolation and mental stagnation, due to the lack of
knowledgeable Instructional Technology colleagues with whom to
collaborate or discuss research.
5. An aversion to working for or being associated with an
institution that permits plagiarists to exist unchecked and
employs professors who openly claim credit for students' work.
Other comments:
When I came here, a year and a half ago, I thought that the College
of Education was sincere in its commitment to improve. I was wrong.
Dean ----- has said that the College of Education should be a
dynamic community of scholars, teachers, and learners. However, all
of this is sabotaged by low standards. The scholars aren't permitted
to be scholarly, for their courses must cater to the dullest
students; the teachers' work is sabotaged by being unable to grade
fairly or penalize plagiarists; and the learners are spoon-fed
elementary information in a manner that ensures that they are
intellectually unprepared to become scholars in their own right.
While there is much bluster in the College of Education about
improvement and excellence, it is all empty rhetoric. Until the
standards of course content, academic competence, evaluation, and
academic honesty are raised, the College of Education will carry on
as an inferior institution, employing inferior faculty and catering
to inferior students. This, coupled with the wretchedness of
Lubbock, ensures that TTU will continue to be attended solely by the
locals, the gullible, and the desperate. I want nothing more to do
with its traditions of mediocrity and hypocrisy.
Having the chance to vent my feelings like that helped me to deal with
the final annoyances that came up as we were leaving. Like the bimbo....
I'd told my students several times over the final weeks of the semester
that I wasn't returning to my office after December 8th. Actually, I
believe that my phrasing was, "You must submit your final assignments on
time, because after I teach class on the 8th I'm going to get in my car
and peel out, leaving 10,000 miles worth of rubber in the parking lot."
This, of course, was mere rhetoric. The truth was, I was running a
little behind schedule. However, when I came in on the 9th, there was a
message on my voice mail from one of my least competent students:
"Doctor Hillman, this is ----. I see that I'm two points short of
getting an A in your course. What do I need to do to make up the
two points? Please call me at ----"
Didya notice that she didn't ask *if* she could make up the points? Who
said that these students don't learn anything? Apparently she'd learned
that if you do a little extra credit you get that A. This, alas, was
true at TTU. There was actually a professor who used to contract for
grades: At the beginning of the year, you'd tell her whether you wanted
an A or a B, and she would assign work accordingly. If you screwed up on
one of the assignments, she'd just give you another.
Well not from me, babe.
I'd *said* that I wasn't going back to my office, so, aside from playing
the message again for the ObChattel to snicker over, I didn't even
bother to return her call to tell her that no, there was nothing that
she could do to get those two points, because that was her final grade.
Y'know, FINAL GRADE, just like it said on my grade sheet.
The great shame of it, however, is that she wasn't actually my student.
She was taking the course as an independent study from one of the other
IT professors. Although, in theory, the grade sheet that I put in the
other guy's mailbox should be the grade she received for the course, I
know that she got her A, because the other professor was the 90% guy.
Epilogue
When the ObChattel and I first turned in our resignations, word ran
quickly through the grapevine about what had happened and why we were
leaving. A few weeks later, I got a call from a high muckety-muck in the
university administration, asking if I'd speak with the chancellor's
lawyer about some of the things MomX had said. I did. Apparently MomX
wasn't such good pals with the chancellor's wife after all. She was
placed on indefinite administrative leave, and then fired.
MrX rewrote his paper to the satisfaction of the other professors and
received a Pass for the course. Perhaps in a few years I'll look him up.
If his lousy undergraduate GPA doesn't continue to keep him out of med
school, and he isn't thrown out for plagiarism, I bet that within five
years of graduation he'll be convicted of Medicare fraud.
The ObChattel and I decided Boston would be a good compromise between
New York City and Providence, and so far it looks like we were right.
She's gainfully employed and we're enjoying civilization.
As for me, I spent some time last fall looking through the *Chronicle of
Higher Education* for professor jobs, but my heart wasn't really in it.
Truth be told, this experience had given me some perspective on teaching
instructional technology and colleges of education. I thought about the
bad research and the stupid presentations I'd seen. Then I'd look though
the jobs, think about spending the rest of my life teaching courses
based on software manuals, and I'd start to feel queasy. I finally
decided just to cut my losses and turn my back on the whole profession.
I taught my courses for the rest of the semester with the sort of
carefree spontaneity that can be expected from a lame duck professor.
After a few months of wondering what to do, I decided to pursue a career
in human-computer interface design. I'll probably have to go back to
school for a piece of paper with the right words on it to waggle at an
employer, and I'm not really sure how I feel about being back on the
other side of the desk. You know what they say about laws and sausages.
In the meanwhile, I'm looking for a job to break into the field -- which
is about as much fun as you can imagine -- and have been doing some
unrelated temp work. Sometimes it feels like I've been doing temp work
since I graduated from college.
But at least we're not in Texas anymore.
--
Dan Hillman hil...@quahog.org http://www.quahog.org/hillman/