Case 1--I'm failing a student for the class because zie cheated on hir final exam. Zie asked another student for help with hir take home final exam and other student said, "write this..." which Helpful Stu took right from hir own take home final exam for my class. And it wasn't just a sentence or two. Nearly 40% of the exam came back as being from Helpful Stu. My boss's reaction? "Did Stu know that they weren't supposed to get help on the exam?" Are you fucking kidding me?? So if this cheating had happened in class on the in-class final where students were collaborating and Stu said, "oh, I didn't know I wasn't supposed to get someone else to write my final for me" would you really buy that excuse? I mean honestly, since when is that a valid excuse? "I didn't know I wasn't supposed to get help with my exam." Especially when it's outlined in the syllabus what constitutes cheating, specifically getting someone to help/write your exam for you. Cheese and fucking rice.
Now, this next one, well, I don't know. It still has my panties in a wad. The last place I taught (and this is my fault for not checking here), a 64 and below was an F. I feel like I remember this being the case in grad school, too, although it may not have been, but it feels like this is the standard that I've been using for forever. So, I grade a 60 as an F. I believe when I go over grades, I address this in class, too. Now, if below 60 is an F, then one of two things needs to happen: I need to change it from now on and/or I need to go back and then readjust all the grades that I gave as a 60, using that as an F and make it then a 58 or a 55. However, my point about all of this is, if you fail, and I mean fail miserably (a 30, a 40, and a 57) three of your four exams, and you have an F on another assignment, which equals a total of 55% of your grades are failing grades and the rest are Cs, then you should a) not expect or even think that you might come out with a B in the class, and you should be worried that not only might a C not be in your future but that a D is unlikely, too. If you fail the major assignments, you are probably not passing the class. So now my "standards" are brought into question. And if a 60 is a D, then well, that "D" Stu made on hir assignment then should actually be a 55, because it wasn't passing. The other problem is that for some reason in my boss's eyes I'm unfair for not allowing the student to redo hir midterm exam (for which zie had a week to prepare) because zie didn't know that zie turned in only one part of it and didn't know that would affect hir grade. Well you know what? I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry you waited until the morning it was due to write it. I'm sorry that you discovered the morning it was due that you don't have word on your computer (you're a senior for crying out loud--how did you make it this far without ever using word? How did you graduate HS without using word on a computer) and that this caused technical difficulties for you. I'm sorry that school was canceled that day (not that it mattered because it was due on-line whether there's school or not, which is the expectation across the board), and I'm sorry you turned the wrong thing in but didn't bother to remedy it until you found out you made a 30 for only doing part of the work, which again, you had a week on which to work on it. I'm sorry that this is going to screw up your graduation plans. But you know what, you probably should have been more careful to pass your exams if you expected to graduate. You failed over half the class.
But here's the real rub. The grade percentages are listed on the syllabus. Not that hard to figure out. 8th grade math. And in a school that's based on engineering and math, if you can't do percents, then seriously, I don't know how you can be an engineer. Furthermore, I go over, with examples, after I give the midterms back, how to calculate the grades. It's not hard. My boss? "I don't know. Using percentages is really confusing. I can't even figure out what your grading system is." REally? You can't figure out what 90% (ooops, sorry, percentages!) what nearly everyone in the department does? You can't figure out, as the chair, how to calculate something worth 10% of the grade? And you're the one in charge??
To recap--I'm
- not up to standards by using a grading scale that is "unusual."
- unfair for failing a student who might not have known it was cheating not only to get someone to help hir write hir take home final for hir but to turn in nearly half of another Stu's final as hir own.
- unfair because I penalized another Stu for only doing half the exam and for doing it poorly at that.
- unfair because I failed (same) Stu who though zie was going to pass even though Stu failed over half the assignments in the class, spectacularly.
ETA: However, the upshot to all of this is that it serves as a reminder that if I either want to get tenure so I don't have to stress about issues like this or want to be mobile (or rather I know the odds of being mobile, but I can do things to increase my chances), then I need to get those articles written and out. And really more for the sake of tenure so I can say to my boss, "well, whatever. It's my policy. It's in the syllabus. I'm sorry Stu doesn't pay attention. Bite me."
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