That slepen al the nyght with open ye

People seem to forget that "Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote" arrives, it really results in sleepless wide-eyed pilgrims yearning for foreign lands. Never mind the "tendre croppes and yonge sonne:" break out the espresso, the grading pens, and the sudden attraction to the newspaper's travel section. Alas, the showers here are coming in abundance, even with, today, bone-cold cubelets of hail. Not. Helping. The. Grading. And the grading is not helping the sleep. Not only have I the issue of Mr. Pay-to-Play (see earlier post), but I have a member of the species discipulus iratus, aka, Angry Student, who substitutes snarling drivel for analysis so that the resulting (low, low) grade can be chalked up to my "disagreement" with DI's "opinion." DI often begins with sweeping statements about American and the world, moving onto how the reading to be analyzed is: a) sarcastic; b)out of touch with the average American; c) intellectually worthless; d) shouldn't be studied by anyone who wants to improve their [sic] life. I do not want to change DI; I want to throttle DI. Being who I am, it is the (lack of) reasoning and argumentation that gets to me most. I am perfectly willing to at least take seriously, with a clenched jaw, well-argued vituperations, because, heck, at least I can respond in kind, and heck, yes, because at least there is something there to grade. In this case, however, my fantasy is to whip out a cigarette lighter (I don't smoke) and burn the thing right in front of him in class. Worse, at this morning's earlier than usual awakening, my first thought after "why am I awake ?" was about how pissed I am about this paper, this student. "@$$hole !" I mentally exclaimed, and then went on some in fanstasied exhortation, in detail and argument unworthy of the slime presented to me in the place of thought, about what was wrong with it. WHY is this getting to me ? (Don't answer that; we all know why. The reasons, like demons, are legion.) Okay, no. misery loves company, O Pilgrims of April: in 200 words or less, please describe the office hour conversation-appropriate substitute for THROTTLING DI WITH MY BARE HANDS AND LIGHTING HIS HAIR ON FIRE. Thank you.

For certes fire ue may not come out of no thing

PS Gif image is offered FREE HERE. Take that, photobucket, which says it violates their terms of use. For WHAT ?

Ward Churchill: It Finally Got To Me, Too

I just took up much too much comment space writing this response on Critical Mass. Here it is, essentially unchanged. My point: Colorado got what it paid for. They have to live with it. Their reasoning is dangerous for us all. Bet Critical Mass wishes I'd said that succinctly.

I'm going to venture a very unpopular position here: in spite of the deficiences in his scholarship, Churchill should get his job back. I was appalled, am appalled at interviews I've seen with students on his campus (not all of whom oppose his return) who say that he should not get his position back "because of the horrible things he said." And, I'd add, if his plagiarsim were as clear as, say, Doris Kearns Goodwin's, he'd have to go. But when you read the committee's findings, it's not so clear as that. As for the fact that he does not have the usual degrees or terminal degrees in his field, this again brings up the issue of a college's right to hire (and it is often the faculty, not the administration, in many places, who really do the hiring) and to retain someone whose teaching, writing, or other expertise warrants the rank. I grant you that this is a horribly complicated question in Churchill's case. Many very selective places do have, though the instances are less and less, full professors who do not hold the expected Ph.D. Reed, for example, and Kenyon, and Oberlin (if I remember correctly) had several still into the nineties and may now. I do not mean MFAs or MBAs, because those degrees are often taken to be the terminal degree in the field. If Colorado once saw itself in that vein, it must live with what it has wrought. There was also a time that one could declare an ethnic identity by proving an identification with it, e.g. by participating in the activities of, and becoming even an honorary member of, a tribe. It is hard for me to write this, because I am very disturbed by the inaccurate and insensitive piece on the tragedy of 9/11, and I find his claims about how he went about his scholarship to reveal a sloppy, egotistical approach to scholarship (he limns plagiarism, but does not really engage in it, if as everyone seems to agree, he "plagiarized" himself). Colorado should have to keep him, but they should ---and should have--- censured him. He should be knocked down a rank/pay grade, he should not serve on certain committees or in certain positions, whatever their faculty regulations will permit. If they do not have these mechanisms of censure, he should stay on as a lesson to them all. "Scholarship vs. polemic" is also a very dangerous standard to begin to use to examine someone's work. For many a radical (many better spoken and more scholarly radicals) their work is a polemic. Presumably, universities hire them not to have a department full of them, but so that their students will be exposed to how a person like that thinks. One assumes the rest of the department, the rest of the college, offers counterbalance. Colorado got what it wanted, promoted Churchill, and made him a large part of their curricular design. If they have decided that moment is over, i.e. that he is an artifact of a culture they can no longer support, they are going to have to separate their own polemical stance from the various weaknesses and ugliness of Churchill's writings. His actions are perhaps censurable, but not cause for detenuring him, vile as he may seem to some now. I can barely stand to hear myself support the guy, but I can face myself: I was happy he won; the grounds for outright dismissal are far too shaky. Colorado should negotiate, perhaps with the AAUP's help (it is supporting Churchill. It often supports tenured people. If you're not tenured, it will support the college), a way for Churchill to exist on campus. Finis.

More Murder and An Exequy

Asia McGowan, shot to death by her former boyfriend at Henry Ford Community College.

Announced on the same day:

• A murder-suicide at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, MI (ex-boyfriend kills former girlfriend)
• A Gettysburg College senior strangled his ex-girlfriend on Thursday.

Virginia Tech will reopen Norris Hall, where the shootings took place. It will contain a Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention.

Emily Rachel Silvestein, sophomore, strangled by her former boyfriend at Gettysburg College

I was tired last night, so have now added some things:

I (still) have no answers, and only a few incomplete theories. My sense about the mass shootings is that, somehow, the school violence has "trickled up" with a generation, from high school shootings to college shootings, to killing your ex-girlfriend on campus. I am tired of the latter crime being classed as "domestic violence," because 1) it fails to address the growing violence against female teens and young women by the boys and young men who sought intimacy with them; 2) it isolates these cases instead of viewing them on a continuum of location specific motivated killings, i.e. why school ? I'll grant opportunity its due, but there is something more to it. In the mass killings there is the constant reiteration that school is not safe, that no one can save you, that innocence is no protection. One need only think of the anomalies in the pattern (Nickel Mines, where the Amish children were gunned down, is hardly ever mentioned, since the killer was not a student or a member of the Amish community) to see that any theory is too narrow and the violence too wide: home, school, church, but I often have wondered why the school was the target at Nickel Mines. What did it, does it, symbolize ? All of the killers are male; the magnitude of their rage and destruction of life, unfathomable. Unforseeable., we keep hearing. Maybe Berryman's guess in this stanza from a Dream Song is as good ---or better--- than anyone else's: do they "fe[el] less/ and more about less than us ?"

Dream Song 34
My mother has your shotgun. One man, wide
in the mind, and tendoned like a grizzly, pried
to his trigger-digit, pal.
He should not have done that, but, I guess,
he didn't feel the best, Sister,—felt less
and more about less than us . . . ?

In every room I teach in, I subconsciously learn, by the end of the second week at most, how many ways there are to get out the door, the windows, whether the door is locked to the outside, where the nearest exits are out of the building. I can't ever remember doing that until Virginia Tech.

PS. Does anyone know how to get rid of those damn daisies (??!!!) that the template has morphed my bullets into ? Not only are they glaringly inappropriate for this post, but for any list I might make, ever.

Their Lyin', Buyin' Hearts

Cranky has had enough espresso to make her veins ache. Cranky has been on every search engine the god/dess ever made, Cranky has been to the library, Cranky has access to Turnitin.com (more useless than a mousetrap in a barn full of cats). Cranky has undergrads with fat wallets who are turning in papers that in no way match their near non-existent abilities to write analytically and grammatically in class. She watches them get all horky-snorty when they get back papers with grades clearly not earned by them. We have a strict policy: no source, no plagiarism accusation. One can hint, one can ask that the student "explain" the paper, but our students who engage in this deceit are also masters of the bold-faced lie. Cranky has had students become almost violently belligerent until she has produced the source for the plagiarism hotly denied. So what is Cranky to do ? This has eaten up an enormous amount of time, but worse, it is getting to CIA. She is VEXED. Of necessity, this post must be in the third person, because without some distance, Cranky is going to explode. Hee-haw.

4.5.09 Update, now that I have had time to read. University Diaries (see sidebar) has two posts relevant to this p³ mentality (pay, plagiarize, play): the first, on Doris Kearns Goodwin's lack of deserved academic disgrace and a second, on bogus diplomas obtained, by of all people, K-12 supervisory personal and teachers, here. Of the first, it cheers me that the Vanderbuilt students see right through the pomp to the essence of the matter. On the second, my cynicism is boundless: it seems that the more stress this system puts on accountability, standards, and testing, the more it is revealed for the house of cards it is, and the all the more should higher ed stay far away from any "reform" that resembles it. I am still of the opinion that if a student can survive public K-12, s/he may finally get an education at college.

Admin Serves Kool Aid; Some Faculty Lap It Up

Fortunately, not at Maryland, but over at Critical Mass, where someone has swallowed the "accountability" potion whole. Bravo to the first, and, at the moment, the only respondent, whose comments ought to serve up some charcoal filtration for Miss O'Connor (the url is "Erin O'Connor.com")'s toxins. This one is all about post-tenure review. [Note to (exhausted) self: Insert longish and to be written section on the spread growing faux-legitimacy of this whole measurable outcomes mishmash and the AAUP's disappointing and growing complicity to act on behalf of adminstrations.] Critical Mass quotes from the Inside Higher Ed Piece by David Scobey that started her, uh, thinking:

Jonathan Sachs, president of the undergraduate student government, said that in general, he appreciates the quality of teaching at Maryland. But he said that he has noticed that those without tenure "tend to be really good," while "a small percentage" of tenured professors "neglect their classrooms." Sachs said he saw the faculty vote against the review plan as "arrogance," and said that they should be "accountable" for their performance.

Well. Well. See last post is what I say. This is a surprise ? That students would say those without tenure "tend to be really good ?" Or, in a part not quoted here, that graduate students would feel that tenured professors "shoot them down ?" And one presumes, of course, that these students would like a voice in this post-tenure review, to assure that faculty members continue to be... how shall we phrase this ? ...accomodating. Oh, heck: see last three posts. Will get back to this, but it makes me too upset to type. And yes, for the record, we all know of deadwood and the cottonmouths that lurk in it. But they would survive post-tenure review just fine anyway, OBN (Old Boy's Network) and all that.

Breaking my own rule about blogging on the mundane and obvious: on the personal cranky front, I can honestly barely get my tendons to keep the typing together here. What is it with March ? Write conference paper(s !!). Grade. Research and write some more. Grade. Meeting A. Meeting B. Meeting C. Meeting about meetings. Subcommittee meetings. Grade. Multiply papers ungraded by hours spent reading committee reports, raised to the power of students pleading for time, attention, extensions. Advising starts. Go to conference. Give paper. Meet people. Get home and e-mail newly met people (= networking or being a twit, twittering). Grade. Oh, yes: prep. Write other paper. Give presentation with colleague to students that, naturally involves demonstrating outrageous technological prowess with video-editing, things flying in from all corners of slides, soundtracks, everything but dry ice fog. Convinced of said prowess, colleagues stop by to ask for help. Senior colleagues. Grade. Oh, yes, teach classes. Fill out multitudinous forms with multiple check boxes, all demanding original receipts and rationales, for travel and conferences, some in the future. Two are returned because "estimated expenses" is not accompanied by receipt. One returned because receipt is not valid without both sides of cancelled check (checks ? are you kidding ? do people still use those ?).

Well, thank you for listening. Cranky is less so now. Cats are sleeping belly up on couch. Ah, Friday.

The New Academic Survival Skills

This is on PostSecret this week. Notice the "It works !" visible on the lower right. I do not work at a place like this (we do not have "Teacher/ Professor of the Year" awards, either, thanks be to god/dess). I did work at a place like the one employing the Secrets sender, and they are ugly, and it seems to me, the ever-increasing norm. The first question my colleagues and I were asked if we turned in a plagiarist or cheater was what we might have done to bring about the situation ("let's see how you wrote that essay question/test"), and people got a lot of mileage out of disparaging colleagues by saying things like I've never had a problem in my classes; I just let them know it's a question of respect; what does it say about us if we are treating our students suspiciously all the time ? And even though it was a small place, there were frats and other arcane organizations whose student members would simply blackball the class (without knowing the meaning of that word) so that the poor (always junior) prof's class wouldn't make, or, would sign up en masse for a class, behave normally throughout and do well, and then write horrendous student evaluations in vengeance for a brother slighted (i.e. caught) in a previous semester. And, dear reader: it worked ! The dean and the entire administration were fixated on student evaluations and numbers, and would turn to the poor guy who had found a few cases of plagiarism, pointing out that Prof. Cowering Dog (publically known as ---tenured--- Prof. Wonderful) was strict, but that the students liked him, and he "never had an issue with that." At the advent of TurnItIn.com, much hang-wringing and soul-searching abounded at faculty meetings, where near teary-eyed profs (the dean and admin enjoyed inner struggle as a spectacle) made little speeches in little voices denouncing the "lack of trust" that this would bring about. Or, infamously, the guy, who upon being told by the dean that he'd received tenure (they also liked ceremony: you had to go in person and wait for him to tell you yea or nay), jumped up from his chair, shook hands heartily with Dean Creep, and proclaimed, "No more Mister Nice Guy !" To which, no surprise, Dean Creep responded, "That's right." You heard me. That's right. Price of doing business, keep 'em coming and keep 'em happy. To pass out pizza during the filling out of evaluation forms (the only forms and type of evaluation that mattered for tenure) was not uncommon, but standard. Students would hint at their orders in advance, but always act politely surprised. One department chair apologized to a coach because a faculty member in his department had caught the plagiarism of two star athletes, deprivig him of their services for one (yes) game. I was young; I thought I was just at a Swamp SLAC, and that these monsters would never raise their heads out of larger lagoons. I was young.

You probably remember the brouhaha (ire, in my mind) raised by the New York Times article, "Judgement Day," supposedly about "polarizing" professors, student evaluations etc. The object of the slaughter story, Annemarie Bean, received little support even on popular sites such as Confessions of A Community College Dean, where, except for one or two like-minded souls, those responding to the post wrote things like "there must be more to it [her non-renewal]," and, except for one writer, who must be my cyber-soulmate (Are you out there ? Have you found me ?), no one pointed out that only the women who were in danger of losing, or who had lost, their jobs, were named. Consider this cozy little bit recounted in the original (NYT) article:

In his polemic “Why the University Should Abolish Faculty Course Evaluations,” published in a faculty newsletter in 2004, Clark Glymour, a philosopher at Carnegie Mellon University, argues that giving good grades can even make up for a professor’s lack of charm and wit. When Glymour was department chairman in the 1980s, a “newly hired assistant professor consistently received the lowest faculty course evaluations in the department, and I was concerned for his career,” Glymour writes. “I knew the man and his outstanding scholarly work well, and I could guess the problems. He was not charming or funny or good-looking, and he had a deep and formal view of philosophical topics.” Traditional and serious, lacking the levity students appreciate, the professor refused to seek help with his teaching, but he assured Glymour that his student evaluations would nevertheless improve significantly. “The next semester he had the highest overall course evaluations in the department, and naturally I asked him how he did it — had he changed how he taught or what he taught? ‘Not at all,’ he said, ‘before the evaluations were given out, almost all of the students knew they were going to get A’s. I see no reason to sacrifice my career to the cause of grade deflation.’ ”

Let's be clear: Glymour [chuckle, chuckle, poke ribs] is condoning this boys' club bit, all for the career, you know. My guess is that women do this less openly. Though our pizza bills were no secret, there were none of those "Atta Boy !" moments in the dean's office. These are the things that make me very CIA. Discuss.

Cranky Is Out of The Office

But not on break, which is making her considerably tired. Still planning my rant on what happened in Kentucky, but a quick target tonight is easily this, from Inside Higher Ed:

Unread Monographs, Uninspired Undergrads
March 18, 2009
Scholarly output rises; undergraduates are disengaged. “This is the real calamity of the research mandate -- 10,000 harried professors forced to labor on disregarded print, and 100,000 unwitting students missing out on rigorous face-to-face learning,” Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, writes in a new paper on relieving research expectations in the humanities.
“I think these two trends -- to do more and more research and less academic engagement on the freshman level -- are not unrelated,” Bauerlein said in an interview about “Professors on the Production Line, Students on their Own." The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research released the paper Tuesday.

Uh, help. This is a white paper ? A serious statement of the issue and policy recommendation ? Has no one told Mr. Bauerlein that a correlation does not, ispa re, prove cause and effect ? There are some very serious, thoughtful responses posted at Inside, unworthy of the alarmist provocation that inspired them. For heaven's sake, (CIA shouts to the rafters, the cats, the espresso machine), perhaps it IS related, Prof. Bauerlein, the other way around ? In all seriousness, student disengagement is a social phenomenom not reducible to this silly factor. Between Kentucky, Ink's post about children's books, and this, it is a very bad time in the history of serious thought. March Madness indeed. Of course, what might one expect from a paper originating from the American Enterprise Institute ? But an Emory professor ? For shame. Speaking of AEI and its philosophy, Stanley Fish would feel right at home. Maybe I am continuing my discussion of the decimation of KCTS after all.