MBA: I want you to know, MA, that we’re all teachers in this room. We do not intend to criticize your teaching, but rather to adjudicate these grade grievances from disgruntled students. We’ve already met with another colleague, MJ, but we need to meet with you to finalize everything.
MA:
Did you hear that? Three other instructors met to discuss these grievances without even asking me to supply my side of the events. But they respect my classroom authority, right? He said so!My syllabus? Did the students complain about the classroom policies? Nothing in there is all that strange… In fact, most of it parallels what I later found on the “Being an Excellent Student” web-page provided by the Uni. Well, there was the one aggrieved party who apparently thought my “No assignments will be accepted after the last day of classes” policy was horribly unfair, but how can my peers and colleagues?Sure… What’s would you like to discuss?…that I was not invited to attend.How is expecting students to act professionally harsh?*Sigh*Well, there’s this… You expect student to take notes. Don’t you think it’s unfair to force them to take notes?And then they file grad grievances and I get called into meetings like this one.And this! You tell them things like they’re supposed to show up on time, not sleep in class… Are you saying you never slept in class? I know I did. And this! You actually expect them to turn off their cell phones? I’ve been in meetings where all people did was use their cell phones.And he thinks that was professional.Fast-forward past protracted discussion of how the student slept in class, asked what chapters he was supposed to read every week (instead of check his syllabus), wrote crappy papers, and was in general a lazy-ass loser that both MBA and MLA had in their classes …and apparently liked. He didn’t earn a C, but got one anyway. No! Here’s the e-mail. All she did was say she was missing class. She doesn’t even mention the paper. I didn’t even read the e-mail until after class was already over!Whoa! Calm down! There’s no need to get upset!But she’s lying if she says I gave her permission. She e-mailed me at around midnight the morning of the last day of classes I didn’t even get the e-mail until the afternoon. She missed a quiz, failed to hand in her final paper, and had been doing borderline work all semester. She earned a D for the course.Why are they bending over backwards for this idiot?A vote…?Epilogue: Two undergrads were given grades they hadn’t earned. These two “professors” have VAP positions at the school where I was adjuncting while trying to earn a Ph.D. The Uni has a well-earned, very BAD rep for graduating ignorant, illiterate, and incompetent undergrads, some of whom managed to scrape by with Cs using the exact same strategies illustrated above. All of the department chairs know this, but I doubt anyone tells them what goes on in grade grievance meetings. I still have flashbacks to this frankly humiliating meeting.
Scene: A small, windowless room. Two tables, placed end-to-end, dominate the room, surrounding by two rings of chairs, one set under the tables, the other against the wall. A feeling of enclosed oppression fills the space.