g****l
发帖数: 32 | 2 He apparently rubbed 'bosses' the wrong way to start with, by asking if he
could take 3 weeks vacation when he was first assigned
the TA. He probably should have laid low when he was warned that the prof is
not fond of him. But still... Below is a comment from the article:
Anonymous posted on Jun 24, 2:11pm
Full disclosure: I'm a PhD student and TA who cares a lot about teaching and
about my students. I have had the opportunity to teach for extraordinary
students and I've had supportive professors who were both concerned about
the quality of teaching and wanted to help me learn. I'm extremely grateful
my Columbia department is not like this.
The comments implying that he was a bad TA are demagogic and absurd. Bad TA
according to whom? The professor disliked the TA; the firing had no
relationship to the quality of his teaching as perceived by students, and
not even the department disputes this. In other words, this was not a
response to complaints or concerns by students about the TA but a response
by a professor to what he perceived as challenges to his authority.
First, not one student was apparently bothered by the 'fucked' email but the
professor, who apparently considered it enough of an issue to start
disciplinary measures. That professor obviously has no concept of what it
means to be a foreigner living in the United States and not understand the
linguistic codes. Second, on the grading issue, it sounds like the TA wanted
to be more lenient towards his students because there was no syllabus
policy about late grading and he thought it was unfairly punitive to take so
many points off of the first late assignments when there was no precedent
on the syllabus. Certainly, he probably should have asked the professor, but
it sounds like the issue was resolved satisfactorily from the point of view
of the professor and it sounds to me like the professor was the one being
rigid towards the students and negligent. The fact that this professor had
no late work policy on the syllabus is pathetic; it speaks volumes about his
priorities. Third, the exam was proctored smoothly by one TA as arranged--
why wouldn't it be? I proctored an examination for a professor of mine for a
class I was not even teaching so that the professor could do something else
that day. Obviously, that professor did not face disciplinary action. Why?
Because it is absolutely unimportant as long as the exam is proctored. If
the TA had been derelict in his responsibility and the exam had not even
been proctored, that would be more serious, even though frankly, any
professor who had a whit of sympathy for the TA would probably have resolved
the issue outside of disciplinary channels and forced them to reproctor the
exam; considering that no harm was done at all, at worst, this should have
resulted in some sort of probation.
So, if it is not about student perceptions of the TA, what /is/ it about? My
conjecture: a professor who was hyper insecure about the slightest
infraction of his arbitrary decisions and went ballistic when he was
disobeyed. In light of how mild these infractions are, the fact that there
was no probation, or warning, or anything is evidence to support this view.
In my department, or any reasonable one, when there are issues like this,
there would probably be a talk and there might be some sort of probation and
serious warning.
The union position that there should actually be transparent policies about
when you can destroy the life prospects of a graduate student is completely
reasonable.
The fact that the dean finds it legitimate to destroy someone's future for
arranging for someone else to proctor an exam should be understood for what
it is - horrific.
Only some sort of authoritarian sociopath completely lacking in sympathy for
a person who wanted to visit their home country during spring break would
take this sort of measure. Shame on that entire department for lining up in
favor of this professor to jettison a 1st-year TA and ruin their future
prospects over this sort of minute infraction.
【在 g****l 的大作中提到】
: http://columbiaspectator.com/news/2015/06/23/claiming-wrongful-
: http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/23080/
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