Three Canadian universities (New Brunswick, Queens, and Concordia) have decided to delay their students’ final examinations next month. This has been done in order to permit students to attend planned protests in Quebec City at the Summit of the Americas, scheduled for April 20 to 22. As far as I know, final examinations have seldom, if ever, been postponed before.
Do you think this is reasonable? Does this decision convey tacit approval of the students’ agenda? If so, does it violate what I would have assumed is a university’s mandate to be objective, to favour no particular political path? Should the fact these universities are publicly funded have had any bearing on their decision to honour their students’ petition for a delay in their examinations to accommodate the protest?
I was going to feign neutrality on these questions but, as must be apparent, I am unable to do so. The universities’ decisions are outrageous. How can the requests of one interest group be respected without respecting other, similarly motivated political requests? Next year, if there’s going to be a huge “right to life” protest on final exam day, will the exam be delayed? How about a rally in support of “Family Values”.
The authorities who acted on behalf of the universities in question are either cowards, afraid to repudiate what they perceive to be politically correct agendas, or are, themselves, knowingly promoting those agendas. They are, in other words, either not worthy of their responsibilities or have been foolishly entrusted with them.
Or, depending on how many students want to go throw garbage cans at Starbucks, the authorities may simply be exercising good customer service.
Students are the (pruported) consumers of the educational services offered by the Universities, after all. If a huge number of them converted to Hinduism (say) and wanted the requisited holidays off, I’m sure the universities would comply.
Well, I guess that the “capricious political agenda of the day” has a slightly higher chance of turning out to be factually correct. My point is simply that good customer service organizations react to the needs and desires, capricious or not, of their customers on little stuff like scheduling.
If ~40% of the student’s (or whatever) ain’t going to be there, a good organization reschedules. Whether the reason is religion, politics or the fact that the local team is going to the Stanley Cup finals is wholly irrelevant. Hell, our school rescheduled exams when the Mets went to the Series in '86. Why? Lots of Mets fans.
I attend another Canadian University, and I think that allowing delayed examinations for the purpose of protesting is not well advised. I’ll state upfront that I think the protest itself is complete bullshit.
If I wanted to stand outside the local Wal-Mart and protest the way it’s helping “screw the local business owners” on an exam day, would I get a deferral? If I went to one of the universities that had offered these exceptions, I damn well better be able to defer an exam for more or less any reason I please.
It’s setting a dangerous precident. If I went to one of the universities in question, I’d be hopping mad; I generally set my schedule well ahead of time and having my exams delayed would screw up flight schedules. Besides, why should I have to wait on account of someone else’s need to beat their breast and yowl at a bunch of people who couldn’t care less?
We had a faculty strike at our university last semester that ran for 3 weeks. It ended roughly 2.5 weeks before classes were to finish; that leaves 3.5 weeks before exams (we have a week respite). Exams were not delayed on account of this astoundingly disruptive event, yet the needs for some incredibly irresponsible students would delay exams? I certainly hope not.
You are being provocative, no? Would you approve of rescheduling the final exams if, say, 40% of the students were going to attend a Klan rally? If yes, then the university can essentially be held for ransom by any special interest group no matter how repugnant, so long as it manages to gather enough support. That is capricious. If no (for obvious and admirable reasons), then you must say no to all groups, and for any partisan cause, or else you risk becoming arbitrary in your implementation. The only way to avoid this problem is to say no to all groups, for any reason, once a date has been agreed-upon and selected (which had been the practice in the past AFAIK).
Oh, pshaw. “The only way to avoid being morally wrong is to eschew all flexibility.” Bullshit.
Moving exams for a Klan rally is repugnant to the central goal of a University. Moving them for the Mets or whatever the silly thing of the day is is not. I’m sorry that you are so blinded by hatred of the anti-free-traders that you are unable so see that.
Also, if we’re going to continue this, would you happen to have a cite? A quick trip to the University of New Brunswick didn’t turn up an announcement of rescheduling. Clearly, more needs to be known of the specifics, if any, before we go further.
There are number of articles available at The National Post’s website, none of which I am able to link. You can go to the site and search it using terms such as Quebec, exams, and summit.
I will quote a brief part of one the articles here (this is only an excerpt and I trust doesn’t interfere with any copyrights). It was published on March 30, 2001.
Here is the Post’s editorial of March 23, 2001 (I’ve given it in toto, so please edit/delete if that’s a problem, retaining if possible the third and fourth paragraphs).
What a perfectly terrible thing, to let students reschedule their exams to participate in a critical political event of the day. Don’t they realize that unless we keep the student body hermetically sealed from what’s going on in the world, the university will lose all credibility?
which, to me, indicated that the U was re-scheduling all finals. That IMHO, would have been a problem (since many may have had already made plans or been scheduled to work etc.). However, as you make clear later on, the U’s involved seem to be announcing that, **in addition to ** routinely allowed reasons to reschedule finals for individual students, that attendance at this protest will be an acceptable reason.
Frankly, I don’t see an issue with it, Michigan State Univeristy (IIRC), is allowing both the basketball and hockey teams to reschedule tests if need be (and probably the members of the spirit band, cheerleaders etc.) due to participation in the NCAA semi finals.
I get the sense that you’re more offended at the rally itself than by the possible participation of students.
Apparently, it is self-evident to both Manhattan and matt_mcl that the desire to attend this particular protest is a legitimate reason to grant an exemption/delay in taking the final exams. Equally, it is self-evident, to Manhattan at least, that attending a Klan rally would not be an acceptable reason.
So, so long as the cause satisfies their criteria, it is OK. Or would they grant exemptions/delays for causes with which they might disagee or find vile eg. right-to-life, any of the rabid anti-gay ‘fundy’ protests, etc.?
And, wring, what offends me is the thought that exam exmptions will be granted on the basis of their political appeal and popularity.
So, KarlG attending a protest to make your voice heard about an issue with national/international repercussions is less important than a sporting event? (see, the way I see it, if the NCAA tournie is legitimate, so’s this protest)
The difference is that a university is an intellectual institution, and the position of the KKK or Fred Phelps is not intellectually defensible. (I wouldn’t have any problem with students putting off their examinations to attend a non-violent pro-life rally.)
Moreover, there is also the fact that the FTAA is likely to have a severe impact on public education itself. See the Council of Canadians’ report. The university therefore has an ethical responsibility to itself and to its present and future students, under its mission to provide public education, to ensure that that mission be protected and to permit action against threats to that mission.
Finally, the university is required by law, for example, to permit students time off to vote. Unless the university is claiming that participation in democracy begins and ends with elections and referenda (not an argument you’re likely to get much of the department of political science to agree with), it would at least be ethically valid of it to permit exam deferrals in order to participate in democratic expression around a political event so crucial as this, particularly when no other forms of democratic expression about the issue are being invited.
Please note what exactly is being described by “exam deferrals”. I have written a deferred exam in the past, and here is how it goes.
The idea is not (as FunkDaddy seems to think) to delay the date of the normal examination. Students not deferring their exams write the exams normally.
Students deferring exams apply for same to the dean/assoc. dean of their department. This must be done separately for each exam needed to be deferred. Once this is done, the exam is deferred to the summer term examination period (which in my case was late August).
You do not get out of your exams, and you do not hold up exams for everyone else. Most importantly, you do not inconvenience the exam invigilators or anyone else, as the mechanisms for deferral for other reasons (medical etc.) are already in place, and the professors and invigilators are at the university anyway for the summer term exams.
This is the essential caveat for me. During the Vietnam War, there were episodes of classes being canceled and semesters ended prematurely so that students could protest. As long as you are not torching someone else’s education so that you can protest without sacrifice, I’m not against allowing you to reschedule exams for something like this.
Is it true that Quebec City officials are going to hermetically seal off the “free traders” meeting zone so that they can avoid any inconvenient contact with protesters?
I’m with the universities on this one. I think the effects from deferring the exams are likely to be minor and the university would not have conceded approval had this not been the case. I think participation in democratic protests is also of value and do not equate democracy with capitalism. In a world where corporations have more de facto rights than individuals I think people have little choice to take to the streets. That said, the university may well be pushing a tacit interest since as matt_mcl points out, they have a stake in this, in addition to their responsibilities to their students. I understand there will be attempts to stop any direct contact between attendees and protesters. I also understand the volatile French farmer who rammed the McDonald’s will not be allowed into Canada.
Yes. They are walling off the majority of downtown Quebec City with a cliff and four kilometres of three-metre-high fences and having strict security checks, thereby preventing residents from receiving guests, businesses from selling to anyone (oh, the irony!) besides summit attendees, and preventing parishioners to worship at their churches.
They’ve also emptied out a local prison, moving low-security inmates to a nearby high-security prison with bikers and rapists (ooh, what a good idea). In fact, Joan Russow, the head of the Green Party, was arrested and imprisoned during the federal election for taking photographs of the prison.