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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Uhh... fold?
No, I got it... raise! Right?
All in???
Now I'm second-guessing myself too much.... Your point? Let's just say I'm too dumb to get it.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Thanks, elcapfool. Actually, Mac should send me some money! He can point to all the traffic/bandwidth and charge more for advertising. Jus doin my part. :-)
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TradIsGood
Trad climber
Gunks end of country
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You can say that if you want. I won't.
Think about it. I won't say life is a poker game. But most of our decisions and sequences of decisions have game qualities. Games of this type were heavily studied in late 40s to early 60s.
The results unfortunately are not generally known. You could also see reference in earlier thread to "The Strategy of Conflict". It is much simpler to read for the non-mathematician than game theory texts.
Perhaps it would be a great addition to elementary school curricula to teach some of these game concepts. Much more practical than chess.
(Raise is wrong. There is no bet to raise yet.)
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TradIsGood
Trad climber
Gunks end of country
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madbolter1 -
Here is something else to consider. Were you a grader or a teacher?
A grade is just a label you assign to somebody with the intent of ranking that person's performance on a set of tasks at the point in time at which they were completed. It would probably be a good bet that half the stuff you "taught" to half of your "A" students was forgotten within two years.
On the other hand you might have had C students, who two years later, have retained the same knowledge or have even extended beyond the 1/2'ers.
By designating yourself a grader instead of a teacher, you forced yourself into a fairly untenable position. You basically turned your work product into grades instead of education. So ironically, you succeeded as a grader and failed as a teacher. (IMO)
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WBraun
climber
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Richard
Thanks for sharing that, and it was very interesting.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Thank you, Werner.
You raise an excellent point, Trad. However, I think your "grader vs. teacher" is a false dichotomy. Why can I not be both?
Without pounding my chest, but just as an honest answer to your question, it is a fact that I run into former students all the time who tell me things like, "You changed my life. I will never see ethical relativism the same way." Or, "Your 'argument from binary terms' has given me the ability to think dilemmas through with a clarity I never thought possible before." I could quote dozens and dozens of pages of quotations from students who believe that what I taught them had impressive and practical application to their lives. So, I don't think I am being obtuse to see myself as a teacher.
Yet, I also think it is possible to "get it right" (or "wrong") about what a particular view or argument is. So, there is actual objectivity involved in the process of charitably understanding what another person is arguing. Those sorts of things can be graded. Good writing can also be graded. There are well-known more or less effective ways to convey certain sorts of thinking, and people can be graded on the clarity with which they convey ideas and properly use the English language (among others). And, in any event, plagiarism is a "fail."
So, it is possible to be a "teacher," in every positive sense you use the term, AND a "grader" in many positive senses that you seem to overlook. In my career I have tried to excel at both.
BTW, I did know that a 'raise' wasn't appropriate (with my limited grasp of poker), but I haven't found the time yet to see how you are making it out that I've got some "royal flush" sitting in my hand. If you could enlighten me about that aspect of the game theory you are employing here, I would be most obliged!
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TradIsGood
Trad climber
Gunks end of country
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mb1 - Pardon me. You are, of course, correct. I did pose it as a dichotomy. You surely could claim to be both. In which case, you failed at both, (I am assuming here that you are now neither - which might be wrong.) Or perhaps, to say that you terminated the activities prematurely would be more accurate.
I was implicitly thinking that you might have a value system that assigned a higher weight to teaching (evidenced in your reply), but at precisely the wrong moment you allowed your grader valuation to override your value of education causing behavior that conflicted with your goal of educating.
My feeling is that your work product of value to society and your students, in particular, was educated students, not graded students. By your actions with respect to grading, you were instrumental in failing to perform the more valuable function (again IMO) on a continuing basis. It is easy to imagine that the financially oriented administrators felt the same, but they were not successful at recognizing and communicating your common interests.
In all fairness, it is easy for teachers to fall into the trap of thinking that grading students is their primary job. It is, after all, much easier than communicating the subject to a body of students with diverse backgrounds and abilities. Unfortunately, in academia, grading seems to be a necessary distraction. :-(
(Of course, the fact that some former students have praised your work, does not negate my "half" comment. In fact, they might even have been the mentioned C students.)
WRT poker. It is too bad that you are not especially familiar with the game. (The flop contains AKQ of hearts.) You must stay in the game, since you have a hand that can't lose. But at the same time, your goal is to optimize (locally) your winnings on this particular hand, and less importantly, in this case, globally, the winnings in the whole game. Your bet contains information that will allow the other players to evaluate what you have, and how they should act. Your goal, in this round is to keep as many as possible in the game. Checking will achieve that, but without getting them to contribute. Their betting in the previous round (and hands) gives you information about their hands. Each of the participants is presumably reading each of these and other cues as to how to proceed.
The point is that your strategies were naive. You were involved in a negotiation. Most successful negotiations have both conflict and a cooperative components. You pursued only conflict, from all appearances here. Negotiations usually require good communications. You did not help the administration to find a solution, nor did they you.
Please see the book mentioned. It is far too rich in content for me to do it justice.
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cjain
Mountain climber
Lake Forest, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 8, 2006 - 03:18pm PT
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Even to the exent you can dichotomize teaching from grading, as a professor you are stuck having to do both.
You are requied to grade by the school as part of your job, and these grades are very, very important to the students, as it has a direct impact on their future. So it is important to be fair and consistent in your grading.
Faced with the situation of M.E., one alternative would have been to explicitly change the policy and make it clear that this was being done at the instruction of the administration. Then submit grade changes not just for M.E., but for any students impacted by the policy in the past.
Ah well, what was done was done. No point second guessing it now.
One question. The end result--the expungement of the class from M.E.'s records strikes me as strange. How did the committee reach that result? Did they ever make a final determination as to whether M.E. committed plagiarism? I ask, because it seems to me that if it was determined that she did not commit plagiarism, she should have gotten whatever grade that she would presumably have earned. But if she did plagiarize, she should have received a failing grade for at least the paper, if not the course. In either case, the class should have remained on her record. What am I missing?
Also, I can't comment on whether failing someone for one incident of plagiarism is "Christlike" or not, but it's interesting to see what Walla Walla College's current "Academic Integrity Policy" is: http://www.wwc.edu/academics/policy/integrity/ This policy appears to have been approved in the immediate aftermath of the M.E. dispute and explicitly allows professors to fail a student for the assignment or for the class, but only after consultation with the administration. Compared to a school like Stanford, WWC seems to have a real lack of of standards and procedures. For example, see http://www.stanford.edu/dept/vpsa/judicialaffairs/students/plagiarism.questions.htm.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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cjain, you make some really thoughtful points, I think. I'll start at the bottom: the lack of a "toothy" academic integrity policy. You are correct that WWC passed this in the immediate aftermath of the incident, however, they just can't bring themselves to adopt a policy and procedures that might "hang them out to dry" in exactly the same sort of extortion that got the job done in M.E.'s case! So, additional problems wait in the wings.
The expungement was entirely without merit, as you note. "Something's missing here." Ultimately the confession just could not be overturned by quasi-reasonable minds, and people were left believing that M.E. did in fact plagiarize just as she said. However, the "academic standards" committee (and I will always say that in scare quotes) decided (on some unspecified basis) that M.E.'s confession was coerced. When I debated this point, I was asked, "What proof do you have that you didn't coerce the confession in any way?" I replied, "Well, how about my word for one thing? What do you want, a statement from M.E. that I didn't coerce her confession? So, how do I then prove that this statement wasn't itself coerced? Another statement that the statement that the confession wasn't coerced wasn't coerced?"
Somehow a logical leap was made from the possibility of coercion of a confession that everybody agreed did reflect the reality of her plagiarism to the notion that this (somehow) justified expunging my course from her transcript. Of course, a little administrative pressure to make something happen can really grease those old "logical" wheels!
I agree that I could have changed my policy, but, particularly in the face of this sort of extortion, that way lies madness. Not only is such a move explicitly caving in to extortion, but it undermines one of the sacred principles of the academy that you properly note just above. There is a tight bond between teacher and student, and the evaluations performed must be sacrosanct. This is why every major university grants complete and total grading power to professors and not to administrators--so that administrative manipulation of just this sort cannot take place--so that a student can have confidence that his/her professor is actually and without manipulation or coercion evaluating his/her work with as much integrity as possible. Only in the case where an obvious abuse of professorial power can be demonstrated is a professor's grade changeable by administrative process. I believe very strongly in these principles, so I didn't feel that I could compromise them.
Which all leads to a sort of overview point that I hope will address Trad's, Pete's, etc. There are all sorts of pragmatic approaches I could have taken if I believed that this matter was a "negotiation." Perhaps I was naive, but I guess I still am, having learned effectively nothing from the whole event. :-) Sorry to disappoint, Trad.
I saw the matter as one of a contrast between principles of integrity and concessions to various forms of dishonesty. I DID offer to let M.E. take the class again, with a replacement grade, for example, and I would have been open to lots of options that would have been consistent with her failing that course at that time. The administration had other ways it could have resolved the issue with daddy, again, consistent with M.E. failing that course at that time. But, the adminstration was determined to placate daddy by offering only some "heroic" method to make the whole event like it had never happened, and, in my idealistic/naive state, I was not going to be party to that.
Perhaps that means something like "I can't get along." All I can say is that I have had no problem "getting along" in many other similar situations at schools that DO value the principle of academic integrity. At such schools, I have "fit right in." I guess I came out of idealistic/naive schools, like are found in the UC and CS systems, and this so nurtured my own idealism/naivity that it just couldn't overcome the shock enough to respond in proper pragmatic fashion.
I'm, of course, speaking somewhat tongue in cheek, but, seriously, I still see no "negotiation" in the works in this setting, not a single one of my friends from other schools had any suggestion to me then that I adopt some more pragmatic approach to "negotiate" some win/win outcome. Perhaps this very fact will horrify Trad about the state of academia, but from earlier posts, I expect that this comes as no surprise. Personally, I still believe in those ideals, so I don't see academia as in need of some sort of pragmatic or negotiation-based makeover.
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TradIsGood
Trad climber
Gunks end of country
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I am not horrified. But you really should read the book. Starting with the 2 day hard line puts you in a corner from the outset. You essentially have written a pact threatening academic death to the student, but it backfired. You ended up dying by your own sword because it also did not allow you any (much) wiggle room.
As was pointed out, you could have wiggled, if you wiggled the same way for prior offenders even ex post and still been "fair". But it is not a pretty solution.
Remember the primary goal is (or should be) education, not grading. If you doubt this, ask what people are paying for when they pay tuition. If they were paying for grades, there would be a different scale for each grade!
Nobody is arguing that grading is not a part of the job. But grades are sort of transitory. I do not remember a single grade today, but probably could list all of my courses. If the goal is permanent education, the grades are really kind of superfluous. If you start with that, then you can tone down the plagiarism policy.
Do not get me wrong - I am very against plagiarism, copyright infringement, and other forms of theft of intellectual property. It is just unfortunate to see pure principle kill an academic's career. But keeping mind that almost no academic institutions could survive only on tuition, leaves this sort of mechanism always lurking, especially for the more financially marginal institution.
Never expect to be able to predict the outcome of a jury or judge. The post crimpie linked to tells a completely different story. What impartial jury will believe 100% of either?
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Oakville, Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Aug 10, 2006 - 08:31am PT
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Richard,
Do you just LOOK stupid, or were you BORN that way?!
Every now and then on McTopo, there is a popular post that receives scores if not hundreds of hits. Suddenly, after a detailed posting by one person, everything stops. It's as though you hear "nothin' but crickets....."
I wonder why that is?
Recently, I made a post asking [url="http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=232647"]*URGENT* - Would you lose your career to do what's right?[/url] The post received many heartfelt responses and suggestions. Many of the answers suggested some form of compromise, which I said wasn't really an option.
Above in Richard's posts, you can read the entire story. I finally got the opportunity just now to read it. I had heard bits and pieces of it from Richard in person, but the whole story makes your head spin.
So now you can answer the question - it is no longer Big Wall Theory, it is Big Wall Fact.
Given the facts of the matter as outlined above, what would you have done? Do you think Richard made the right move, or not?
Personally, I'd have caved in. I am too much a pragmatist. I would have employed the cowardly technique of "situational ethics" - I agree that to change her mark is ethically wrong, however in my unique situation, there is valid reason to do so.
P.S. Is there anybody on this forum who is so unfamiliar with the story of Peter and the Wolf that it needed to be copied and pasted above? Sheesh.
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elcapfool
Big Wall climber
hiding in plain sight
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Aug 10, 2006 - 08:41am PT
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Supporting a wife and kids changes the game quite a bit.
Money is Mammon, and Mammon rules on Earth.
The whole thing just sucks. But Sun Tzu wrote that one should never back an enemy into a corner, as it fills them with a terrible resolve.
It seems that even a religious institution can be filled with the demons of men.
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TradIsGood
Trad climber
Gunks end of country
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Aug 10, 2006 - 08:44am PT
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Peter, I must have missed your wolf story. All I remember are stories about crabs, pirate ledges, cybele, and wine. Did you really do an ascent with a wolf?
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Oakville, Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Aug 10, 2006 - 09:32am PT
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Not as of yet.
To me, the leaders of the college were like the pharisees in Jesus' time. The guys with the political power who abused it to further their own needs at the expense of the flock, all the while maintaining their "holier-than-thou" position.
I miss my crab. I would like him returned, please. He belonged to my daughter who I loved, and who I lost six years ago this month.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
St. Louis
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Aug 10, 2006 - 09:38am PT
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The crab is still gone? That sucks.
Edited to say that the above may be interpreted as a cruel statement and it was not intended as such. Of course it sucks *far* more - in a non-comparable way - that you lost your daughter. I'm very sorry to hear of this loss.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 10, 2006 - 11:24am PT
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Pete
"I miss my crab."
The crab was sitting on the stone retaining wall at the 140 - 120 junction (where the old yose dam used to be). I am not shitting you man. I saw it twice as I drove by (I did not have time to stop).
I thought it was weird ........
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Aug 15, 2006 - 01:35pm PT
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I know it's been awhile, but I did want to summarize one final point about this case. Some of the legal docs have been linked, and some people have suggested that these come apart from my above account. The idea is that I have told only a partial and thereby distorted account so far.
What I have said so far has indeed been only a partial story (the whole thing is quite complex). However, what I have said so far is consistent with the linked legal docs. The emphasis has been different, but there is no distortion.
The emphasis in the linked docs has been on the distinction between analytical and continental philosophy. The reason we had to deal with that distinction in the lawsuit is that this is the emphasis WWC wanted to put on the case. Their response to the suit was carefully cast to appeal to the very view courts have traditionally had about such cases: Internal squabbling and disgruntled professors. Just as my attorneys predicted, the college's best case (and the one that ultimately carried the day) WAS to make the matter overly simple, "Really, your honor, regardless of what Jensen tries to fabricate, the matter here is quite simple: The college needed a continental philosopher, it thought it was hiring a continental philosopher, and when the college realized that Jensen was downright hostile to continental philosophy, it simply opted to not renew his contract. Washington is an at-will-employment State, and so the college simply exercised its legal right, during the initial three years prior to tenure, to determine that Jensen was not a good fit with the college's needs."
Wow, so simple. See? Everything Jensen tries to claim is nothing but smoke and mirrors in a desperate attempt to obscure the SIMPLE truth!
And, that tactic worked beautifully. The courts WANTED to hear such a SIMPLE case, and that beautiful simplicity is exactly what they got out of all the briefs.
What the court negelected to pay any attention to, however, was a whole series of pesky FACTS that demonstrated the college's "simple" case to BE the smokescreen.
For example, when I was repeatedly interviewed at the college one weekend, with more than a dozen representatives from various departments, and in another instance with dozens of students present, I repeatedly emphasized that I am trained as an analytical philosopher. I repeatedly stated that I was not sympathetic to continental philosophy and did not consider it to be mainstream, but rather that it is properly viewed as a small cul-de-sac off of the superhighway that has been analytical philosophy. (This, by the way, is not just my own "take" on the matter. The Princeton Review and the Philosophical Gourmet have stated this view.) I argued that from the ancients to the present, philosophy has always been advanced using analytical methods, and even continental philosophy itself can only be evaluated (even from within that discipline) using analytical methods. So, I made my "bias" (if something of this foundational magnitude can be called a "bias") perfectly clear.
However, the college had employed a continental philosopher for five years prior, and she argued against me during these interviews, so I got the impression that the college WAS indeed looking for a continental philosopher. I went home after the interviews assuming that I was not the man for the job.
When the Chair called me the next day to offer me the job, I was honestly shocked, and expressed this forthrightly: "It seemed clear to me that you wanted a continental philosopher, and I will NEVER be one."
The Chair replied, "You were most impressive and persuasive in your interviews, and we are convinced that you will teach philosophy like we actually want it taught."
I responded, "Well, now my concern is that you're going to move me 2000 miles, away from jobs that both my wife and I like, and THEN you're going to think, 'Well, we really want a continental after all.' And then we're going to be screwed. I am NOT moving to take that job unless you can assure me that my particular philosophical 'bent' is not going to become some sort of after-the-fact issue."
The Chair assured me: "We WELL recognize the distinction at this point, and we WANT you and your 'analytical' philosophy. I can assure you that I recognize your concerns, and the analytical/continental distinction will NEVER be an issue in your evaluations or in any decisions about your ongoing retention."
I immediately called two of my colleagues at CSUSB and related the entire conversation. One suggested that I get that point in writing, although (stupidly) I responded, "No, the Chair is my Christian brother, and I'm sure he's good for his word on this." Both remember that conversation, and when the Chair informed me that I was not going to be rehired, on the basis of that very distinction, I reminded him of that conversation. He admitted to it to my face, but said that he had to do what was best for the department (as it turns out, THAT having NOTHING whatsoever to do with some philosophical distinction).
I had been suspicious early in my second year when the Chair talked with me about what courses I would be teaching in that year. He said, "You should teach courses you like."
I said, "No, I agreed to teach some courses like Feminist Philosophy and Existentialism, and I am happy to teach those courses. I actually enjoy broadening myself."
He replied, "No, it's better for you to teach the stuff you really like." And at that point we settled on a totally mainstream package of courses for the year. But I was very curious why the department didn't want me to teach any of the "transition" continental courses they had earlier suggested. At that time I simply concluded that they were happy with how things were going (which is the ONLY thing that can be drawn from the documents of that time). So, I thought little of it until when MUCH LATER the department started manufacturing the notion that I had "steadfastly refused" to teach the continental courses they required of me. Leave it to the history department to invent a "history" of events.
ALL the documents I and the department can produce demonstrate that the analytical/continental distinction was not in play until AFTER the department had already decided to let me go. There can be no denying that the analytical/continental distinction was to play no role in my evaluations or retention. And there can be no doubt that ALL my peer evaluations were stellar, indicating that the department was more than satisfied with my teaching.
ONLY when the department came under scrutiny from the students, many parents, the Board, and a court, did the analytical/continental distinction increasingly become THE reason why I was fired. THIS was the only remotely reasonable thing the department could say! So, in our court case, we had to address this issue in great detail and demonstrate how it COULD NOT have played the role LATER indicated by the department... and how it could not have explained the MANY Handbook violations that took place.
The department succeeded in making our case look overly complex, while their account was brilliantly simple. The court, as predicted, fixated on the "simple truth," in intentional ignorance of the many FACTS this "simple truth" left unaccounted for.
I feel confident that people on this thread don't want to get into the minute details of exactly HOW the college violated the Handbook. But I did want to clarify that my overview account as given earlier is not inconsistent with the linked documents. The case WAS complex (apparently far too complex for a court to bother with), yet the truth of what happened actually bears no resemblance to the "simple" case the department would have everyone believe.
I repeat that I don't regret the decisions I made. I feel good about taking the stands I did, although my case should act as a warning to future junior faculty.
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Nefarius
Big Wall climber
Fresno, CA
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Aug 15, 2006 - 02:09pm PT
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All seems pretty reasonable, Richard, as well as common, unfortunately. Things like this happen in the professional world all the time. Someone does something, good or bad, that gets someone else bent one way or the other, but that something isn't legally or morally able/enough to get them dismissed. So, they make up some crap or dumb it down. How would this be any different than the countless number of people "let go", daily, for the lame excuse of "downsizing" or "budgetary constraints"?
So, why is there any confusion here?
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Aug 15, 2006 - 02:14pm PT
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No confusion in MY mind... not EVER on ANY subject! :-)
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Aug 15, 2006 - 02:29pm PT
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Wow. Thanks for your candor on that. If anything that's a crazier story than the WOS multi-decade saga... almost.
My own, irrelevent, take on this is that, as presented, you did the right thing and took the high road. You get my vote.
It looks like you're still in Walla-Walla. I would think that may seem a small town after this.
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