CU (University of CO) students punished for time helping with Katrina

[deadparrot]

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A year ago, Jessica Cramer was pulled away from class at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs to assist victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

When she returned from New Orleans more than two weeks later, a couple of instructors took an unsympathetic view of her departure, she said, even though she went as a member of the Colorado Air National Guard. Her grade in communications dropped from an A to a B, due to a combination of poor attendance and difficulty making up a test.

Other deployed students, she said, were not allowed to make up science labs, given failing grades and forced to drop classes.

In extreme cases, the bad grades or uncompleted classes meant repayment of financial aid and the loss of GI Bill assistance.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4964938,00.html

[silverweb]

1. Support the troops! Yeah!

"...even though she went as a member of the Colorado Air National Guard. <snip> Other deployed students, she said, were not allowed to make up science labs, given failing grades and forced to drop classes."


Isn't penalizing National Guard members for doing their duty illegal? At the very least, it's fucking unpatriotic!! And in Colorado Springs, of all places... sheesh!

I hope the University is held up for nonstop ridicule and censure until it is forced to treat returning Guard members fairly.

[Eric J in MN]

3. It's illegal to punish an employee for leaving for military service.

I don't know if there is a law about students.

[silverweb]

4. Those are my thoughts, too.

Maybe it's time to check for other evidence of penalization against students for Guard duty and make sure there's a law to protect them.

[meow2u3]

2. Sounds like retaliation to me

What kind of childish asshole would retaliate against someone trying to do good? What kind of monster are those profs?

OOPS! I forgot--right-wing fascist bastards who think kindness, compassion, and doing good are signs of weakness instead of strength.

[wickerwoman]

7. I used to teach at a university

and I can understand why this happened.

The point of taking a university class is to learn the material in that class. A student who misses a few weeks is missing more than a quarter of the lessons. What is the professor supposed to do? Boost her grades on tests and papers? How is that fair to the students who came to class and did the work (and, not incidentally, DID learn the material?)

While this student certainly did commendable work in New Orleans, how should that translate to an A in chemistry? I sent money to Habitat for Humanity. Should I get a better grade because of it? She made a sacrifice to go to New Orleans and help people and I think that's great but she should accept the natural consequences of that sacrifice (lower grades) with a little more grace.

[TreasonousBastard]

8. While I understand that the point is to learn...

and that a returning Guard student shouldn't automatically have grades raised any more than a returning salesman should have commissions he didn't earn, I don't really understand why there was no attempt to let them make up the work.

[Occulus]

10. Begging your pardon, but exactly who pays your salary and where does that

money come from?

Simply put, what if nobody decided to attend your school? What if every last student dropped out, never came back, and no new students ever came?

What would happen?

By the way, one point of being in the National Guard is to assist in the recovery from major national disasters. "I'll drop your grade if there's a disaster you have to respond to" should result in immediate termination. That should not, ever, be tolerated. The need to respond comes before your petty little class, and you as a supposedly educated and enlightened individual ought to know that fact, balls to bones.

At the very least, you as an educator ought to be willing in such a circumstance to allow makeup work for the student, including a fair period of time to make up any missed tests. It should not, ever, be an automatic thing, as doing so sends the message to the student that you do not believe them capable of performing the makeup work adequately.

If you're scoffing at the idea of makeup work under such circumstances, you're completely missing the point.

At many universities, the suicide (or death?) of one's roommate translates into an automatic A in all classes for the surviving roommate. Should they get a better grade because of it? They, after all, made no special sacrifice; they were merely in close proximity to a traumatic event. I think it's great they lived and their roommate died, but they should accept the consequences of being traumatized (lower grades) with a little more grace.

:eyes:

[wickerwoman]

13. The state paid part of my salary

and the students paid the rest *to educate them* and frankly, I'm not doing that if I let a student pass a class who hasn't met the requirements. What if this student were in medical school and missed a quarter of a semester? Are we supposed to let her become a doctor or an engineer (despite the risk that her ignorance might have to the lives of others) because she was off doing something noble?

"A for the death of a classmate" is an urban myth. (see http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/suicide.asp) It's not policy at any university I'm aware of. I'm not scoffing at the idea of make-up work but in some cases it's not practical (often participation in class is how students show mastery of the material and a paper or a test won't accomplish the deal.) I think this student should have gone to her dean (before she went to the newspaper) and asked to retake the class next semester. Any dean I know would have allowed her to retake the class for free without a penalty to her grade (and without the other class appearing on her transcript.)

Finally, even though my salary comes from tuition education is not a service industry. You don't pay x amount of money for y amount of education. Teachers are not servants. They can't do their job if they aren't willing to stand up to students when they think that ultimately it is in the student's best interest. So sorry, the grade you get in my class is going to be a reflection of what you learned in that class and nothing else.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. I'm a former academic

and I always allowed students the opportunity to make up work if they had a reasonable excuse AND if they had been good students throughout the term. I was not at all sympathetic to the goof-offs and flake-outs.

For example, I had a student who just disappeared in the middle of spring semester for two months without explanation before, during, or after, other than an off-handed, "I was busy." I flunked him with no regrets.

However, when one of my most hard-working students injured his right arm severely in a freak accident two weeks before finals and presented me with doctor's notes and dean's notes, I gave him the option of skipping the final and just taking the grade he had going in. He was a graduating senior, he'd been an excellent student all year, and he didn't demand special treatment, so that was an easy call.

[wickerwoman]

29. So did I.

But I also had a student with mono who missed three quarters of the classes. There was no way in hell she would ever be able make up everything she had missed because we had done things in class that she couldn't make up and the overall load of work was overwhelming. I let her take an incomplete, she retook the class the next term, the old class was scrubbed from her transcript and everybody was happy.

What I'm saying is that without knowing the syllabus and the details of the classes this student missed and what kind of make-up work was offered and what quality it was, etc. there is no way to judge this teacher's actions fairly.

[acmavm]

19. You need to get into another line of work, one that doesn't require

critical thinking skills. Because apparently you have none. These people had no choice and they were doing the human and correct thing for their fellow human being. Who said give them an 'A' for work they hadn't done? The point is, let them make up the work as is reality hadn't burst in on them and disturbed their education or their lives.

Your feelings or opinions are irrelevant. Doing what's right and best for the students is what matters here.

[wickerwoman]

28. I'll work on my critical thinking

when you work on your reading comprehension.

"I'm not scoffing at the idea of make-up work but in some cases it's not practical (often participation in class is how students show mastery of the material and a paper or a test won't accomplish the deal.) I think this student should have gone to her dean (before she went to the newspaper) and asked to retake the class next semester. Any dean I know would have allowed her to retake the class for free without a penalty to her grade (and without the other class appearing on her transcript.)"

I think the student should have been given an reasonable opportunity to make up the work and if they weren't able to do it, they should have taken an incomplete for the semester and retaken the class the next term without any monetary or scholastic penalty. What part of doing that isn't in the student's best interest? And how is it in the student's best interest to give her a grade she didn't earn and potentially put her in a situation where she's expected to know something that she doesn't actually know?

[acmavm]

35. Your dishonesty is amusing. Where up to this point were those sage

comments posted? Where did you say that maybe there was some chance or accomodating the student?

You didn't.

[wickerwoman]

38. Umm... it's a quote from post 13.

[pitohui]

27. i like this post

in fact i was thinking this very same thing:

I'll drop your grade if there's a disaster you have to respond to" should result in immediate termination. That should not, ever, be tolerated

[Fredda Weinberg]

11. The instructors had been asked to accomodate students

Apparently there was no set policy and it was up to the instructor's discretion. Under such circumstances, makeup exams and additional assignments could have compensated for lost class time. It doesn't hurt to give an incomplete and let the student finish the next semester.

I too have taught at the collegiate level - give national guard members a break.

[koopie57]

14. yes, I understand the need

for a student to have the benefit of the entire class or the professor will not be comfortable saying that they do know the information. But, I think is would be more fair to have the student to have the option to repeat the class without cost as it was already paid for.

[mbperrin]

17. Happy to see you're a former academic. I'm current.

Too many "instructors" feel that the only way to learn the material in their class is to spend time in the box, large or small, that constitutes the classroom or lab. And the time must be spent with their wonderful selves, for which there are no substitutes, and which even a few minutes or hours missing cannot be ever recovered, so really, those students who miss any time for any reason should go weeping into the outer darkness in despair, and really should probably kill themselves, as they've missed the brass ring to all knowledge and success.

Or not. In reality, the purpose of the course is to allow students to master a minimum of 70% of the material at the undergrad level, and 80% in grad school. Asynchronous makeups on the web are an effective way to operate while maximizing time of both student and instructor, without the endless scheduling of face time. Peer tutoring and makeup exams at learning centers or testing centers or whatever the local campus calls them are also good ways to go.

It really depends on your view of education: either you are there to help students acquire knowledge in any way that they can, or you want to stamp "good" or "bad" on them like the assembly line process too many places have become, because it's easy for lazy instructors, and also gratifying to their egos.

Actually, since most people on the planet will never spend time in any particular classroom with any particular instructor, it is most unlikely that any of these teachers are absolutely critical to life on the planet as we know it, nor is it likely that personal contact with them is necessary for a fulfilling, productive, and happy life.

So.........work for student success. If not, please work elsewhere. Thank you.

[wickerwoman]

30. You make a lot of assumptions in your post

and many of them are completely unfair.

I don't think that the only way for a student to learn is face time with the prof. What I'm saying is that neither one of us knows the details of this teacher's syllabus or what kind of make-up work was offered or how the student did on it. I had students I busted my ass to help in many different ways who still couldn't perform on the final paper. Should I have given them an A for effort? And how would that help them in the real world?

If I learned one thing teaching it's that helping the students and being popular with them are not the same thing. The worst teachers are the ones who try to keep the students happy while not giving a shit if they actually learn anything. It would have been easy for this teacher to have just passed this student along but they took a stand for learning and I admire that. And I suspect that you would too if you thought about it a little more.

Peace.

[acmavm]

18. Obviously the point is something things happen, life intervenes, and

in that case they should have been given the opportunity to retake those classes without being penalized in any way, shape, or form. Anyone who can't see that is too stupid to teach anything.

[jwirr]

22. The U should have found some way to see that the class was completed

without the students losing further financial aid. The drop in grades is bad but the lose of financial aid is fatal.

[Miss Chybil]

23. Incomplete - These students could have been given Incompletes

and allowed to pick up the classes at the point they left them the following semester. The more humane thing to do however, would have been for the professors to put out a little effort of their own to help these students make up the missed work. Two weeks? Give me a break.

I guess the NOLA victims should have accepted the consequences of the flood with a little more grace, as well? Sometimes, some of you academics are just a little too full of yourselves - getting on this little power trip with these young people. See, if these students were older students, such as myself, their professors would have felt a whole lot of heat around them about the whole mess way before grades came out. I'd start at the dean's office, work my way to the president of the university and then on to the local news, if I had to. Somebody would let me make up my labs and exams.

[pagandem4justice]

24. At my former university,

personal issues and make-ups, while at the ultimate discretion of the instructor, could most certainly be granted. All the professor has to do is to submit a grade of "I" (incomplete) for the semester/term. According to university policy, the student then has one additional term to make up the work, whereupon the professor submits an official "change of grade" form, and the "I" is replaced on the student's transcript. It's a compassionate remedy to the inevitable slices of real-life that interrupt education at times, without requiring the instructor to "curve" or "boost" grades.

Of course, policies vary according to institution, but I'd imagine that most unis would have some similar path of recourse, especially for military-attached students. I mean, sheesh, how many admins or profs would honestly think that in today's world, with disasters, wars, families spread across the country and indeed the globe, etc., that every single student could re-schedule all "real life" issues for the one week break between terms?

:think: :shrug: :eyes:

[struggle4progress]

25. I suspect a whining student.

I taught for years. Everywhere I ever taught, student complaints about faculty were taken very seriously and given careful consideration.

Almost every faculty member I ever knew bent over backwards to work with students -- whatever the problem was. Typically, one asks the students to document the reasons for unavoidable absences; in rare cases, the student requests an "incomplete" grade due to missing substantial work for good cause.

This works well with almost everybody but not with everybody.

A small number of people play games: they fail to come to a required laboratory listed in the syllabus but file an official complaint that they did not do the laboratory work because the instructor would not explain it to them; they walk into a three-hour final exam five minutes before the exam ends, without any explanation, and then complain the exam was too long to finish; they miss a test, schedule a make-up, miss the make-up without any excuse, and then complain the instructor would not give them a make-up test.

I strongly suspect there's more to this story than a student victimized by unsympathetic instructors.

[pitohui]

31. see post # 12 by whoa nelly

it sounds like the guard has acknowledged that there is no protection for student's interests if they are called up and it causes an interruption in their education

this should and must be changed

[struggle4progress]

32. Several responses. First, the best way to protect NG personnel ..

.. interests would be statutory restrictions on the improper federalization of NG units to avoid a draft in fighting undeclared wars: if the NG, which (after all) has important state militia duties, is to be federalized and mobilized for war duty, this should be only in the context of a more general mobilization.

Second, if whoa nelly's post is correct, the Federal Treasury (rather than the schools) should reimburse the student for expenses and fees: most schools do not refund these after the first month or so or classes anyway, under most circumstances, since the schools incur non-recoverable costs in allocasting facilities for students.

Third, if whoa nelly's post is correct, there's certainly some political winner of a legislative proposal that can be attached to the observation.

Fourth, whether whoa nelly's post is correct or not, long experience makes me suspicious of student claims about instructors unwilling to work with the student to find a suitable remedy in cases of unavoidable absence. I acknowledge, certainly, that there is the rare jackass who unreasonably ignores the student's plight in awkward circumstances -- but since jackasses are rather evenly spread through the population, and since students considerably outnumber instructors, the odds seem good (when you see a story like this) that the student is at fault: a real jackass of an instructor would regularly generate a large number of student complaints, administration would notice, and the instructor would typically not survive long at the institution.

[pitohui]

33. i'm asking not telling but i am asking

it sounds like you believe the students are making it up?, i have a different experience, mine was that some professors would work with you and some were only concerned w. gate-keeping, when i was a grad student assigned to teach, one of my instructors told me in words of one syllable to discriminate and used that word and gave the whole long rant about how discrimination really means using your mind blah blah blah de blah

by gate-keeping yeah, gender, race, class, certain mannerisms that might be "gay" all these were objectionable to certain instructors, we live in a dream world if we kid ourselves that all college instructors are wonderful caring progressives what you're missing is this is COLORADO -- there was prob. majorly bent out of shaping because here's a "chick" helping black people in new orleans instead of servicing the prof's ego needs

jackasses are rather evenly spread through the population, and since students considerably outnumber instructors, the odds seem good

no, here you are stepping in my area of expertise, i may not know beans abt academia, but this former professional gambler is here to say i'd love to play poker with you if you don't see the hole in that one

many professors, even today, have tenure, but even a lowly grad assistant (i was one back in the day) is in a position of power over the student

i don't want to be the person to disillusion you but it's an unfortunate reality of human nature that the more powerful you are, the more of an asshole you can become because, well, you can get away with it

if you want to gamble that the proportion of assholes in the population of the utterly powerless (students so poor they have to join the nat'l guard for extra $) is the same or even close to the same as the proportion of assholes in a population of the powerful (those who completed their education and got tenure or those who completed their education and now are looking down on those who didn't for not being all boostrappy) ...

well i'll just say it again, i can tell you're no math or statistics professor, no offense, but you haven't got a clue on how odds are shaped

[struggle4progress]

34. I worded my response carefully and said pretty precisely what ..

.. I wanted to say about the potential credibility of the student; in particular, quoting a half-sentence out of context may be a jolly nice trick for writing a politically tricky judicial opinion (Marbury v. Madison, say), but in some circles, it's regarded as intellectually dishonest.

I never taught at any institution where I felt I had unlimited power over students, even after receiving tenure; whether the students thought I had unlimited power over them is a different question. A tricky apect of education is teaching late adolescent students to take responsibility for their own behaviors and their own learning: in my experience, instructor insistence on this point is a major source of student complaints that the instructor is "unhelpful" or "doesn't care."

Gate-keeping, per se, is not wrong: I always adjusted my expectations so that almost anybody could earn a passing grade in my class, but typically a quarter to a half of the classes flunked. The students who flunked BTW were not necessarily the least intelligent: most people who put in a meaningful effort learned the material; some of the more intelligent kids who didn't pass had wasted their intellectual talents playing stupid political games.

Older jackasses are, of course, more skillful at being jackasses than younger ones, having had more years to practice, and therefore the older ones are typically more irritating and humiliating to encounter. But I see no reason to think that jackasses accumulate preferentially in tenured university faculty positions, and my experience suggests that people who are less intellectually secure are more likely to act crappily in an academic setting than people who are more intellectually secure. Based on my experiences with students, I'd guess a few percent of that population are real jerks; I don't think the figure for faculty is much different.

And do feel free to deride the mathematical or statistical abilities of people with whom you have only the most rudimentary familiarity ...

[wickerwoman]

39. Hallelujah!

I can't believe I'm having my professional capabilities and intelligence questioned for suggesting that of the following two possibilities:

a.) an evil prof who hates black people and likes to see them die and wants to punish someone for trying to help them risking his career and professional reputation all while stroking his moustache and laughing maniacally

or

b.) a student who really, really wanted an A and didn't get it and had a bad conversation with the prof and then ran off the newspapers before exploring established channels of recourse and is probably already feeling embarrased about making such a fuss when all she had to do was go to the dean and take an incomplete

that the second is a slightly more likely possibility.
:shrug:

[Orangepeel]

40. At least, I'd like to know what "difficulty making up a test" means

before I pass judgment.

Ideally, I'd like to know both sides of the story (keeping in mind that the professor can't comment about a student's work or grades to the press because of privacy laws).

[pitohui]

26. it's colorado

they are punishing these people for helping black people

racist scumbags

my theory anyway

[neoblues]

5. Obviously they have their priorites wrong...

Don't they know that those "people" down there are an embarrassment to "The Administration" and therefore have been unofficially condemned--so any time spent engaging in such "liberal" activities as personally assisting is not to be encouraged. Plainly, in "Neo-America", people are in it by and for themselves--"individual" achievement is what counts--and "wasting" time helping others is in conflict with the neo-national values, so of course it's going to negatively affect your own personal success.

To be a true Republican--or "proper" American--you have to focus only on yourself. Likewise, college professors who understand the new reality, have a responsibility to "teach" these up and coming young people how "the real world" works. That is, they have a responsibility to not make allowances or accomodations to students who don't yet understand what's important (themselves/their own personal success).

Sadly, all of that ought to be sarcasm, but from where I sit, it very much seems to be the message that's being given to America's youth--throughout the media--in what seems to be an attempt to alter the 'culture' of future generations of Americans. If George Bush can't subvert Social Security and the New Deal programs directly, those behind him can produce a slow but inevitable "sea change" in the world views and culture of the next generation (simply by controlling many aspects of the world they face, such as the availability of education/educational loans, making school into a harsh, dog-eat-dog competition, and an unending variety of other reinforcing messages/propaganda in what the see on TV, video-games, etc...). You think that a generation of self-centered, Republican-idealized people are going to stand for paying the high taxes necessary to pay for Social Security for the large, older/retired population?

Will they, by and large, succeed in changing the values of Americans? I don't know, I hope not. I hope this is just a sort of paranoid suspicion. Alas, it seems to me we'd be fooling not to assume that those behind the current Republican governmental take-over might not, indeed, engage in such Orwellian attempts to manipulate the population/America's future (in a very real, shockingly immoral, albeit subtle way).

[kestrel91316]

6. Oh, the irony........................

that this happened at UC Co Spgs (very red), and NOT at UC Boulder (very blue).

Those RWers........you just never know what funny stuff they'll be up to next............

[RangerSmith]

20. I wouldn't assume

the professors were RW.

They could be people who don't like those in the military and simply taking their shots wherever they can. And, yes, I'm very fmailiar with CU and it's make-up.

[Solon]

9. Isn't that type of stuff illegal?

I know employers cannot punish you for being deployed in the National Guard, don't schools have to follow the same rules?

[Whoa_Nelly]

12. Found this info re: Nat'l. Guard as students

Hope those affected by what happened to them have this info

National Guard and Reserve Members that are Students.

Currently, federal law does not guarantee equal rights and protections across the country to members of the National Guard and Reserve who are enrolled in schools, colleges and universities. Student members of the National Guard and Reserve are not guaranteed refunds of tuition and fees paid for the term they cannot complete. There are no provisions for partial course credit, or the right to return to the college or university upon completion of active service. However, help is on the way. The Service members Opportunity Colleges (SOC) organization is prepared to intercede for members experiencing problems, such as loss of credit in school courses due to call-up. If a student called to active duty is experiencing problems related to course credit, tuition, fees or re-enrollment in a program of study, he/she can call, toll free, 1-800-368-5622, or write to: Service members Opportunity Colleges, 1 DuPont Circle, NW, Suite 680, Washington, DC 20036. A representative from SOC will work with the student soldier and the institution involved to resolve the issue. Unit commanders with members experiencing such problems are urged to make every effort to ensure these members know this help is available.

http://www.esgr.org/members2/tips.asp

[Berry Cool]

15. It's time somebody got embarrassed.

Keith Olbermann should make these instructors his "Worst Persons in the World." The U of C will be stung by the negative publicity and the instructors will be forced to clean up their act.

I am all for not giving National Guard students grades they didn't deserve, but they DO deserve an opportunity to make up their work at no penalty or extra charge when they had to interrupt their class attendance to do their duty and HELP PEOPLE. After all, they were desperately needed, being some of the few of their kind not off in Iraq and unavailable.

[alfredo]

21. We need to raise hell about this. I am sending this to my

veterans mailing list.

[MasonJar]

36. The University of Colorada needs an avalanche of complaints.

Anybody got a link?

[Robb]

37. Is this where I comment on the tragedy of getting a B?

Her grade in one class dropped from an A to a B. She's in student government. She's "got her eye on medical school."

She said she had talked to students who were failed for missing classes. Where are they? Are we supposed to assume the RMN couldn't find them?

Forgive me, but this looks for all the world to be a great thing for her CV. Flame me if you must, but no one's ever asked me what grade I got in a particular class in college. If it results in the creation of a policy for the school, grand.

But I'm not going to cry for her B.