Ok matt.
I’m losing my touch. I just can’t tell if you dead panned that last response, or if you were being serious.
If you were being serious, what are they really doing to restrict access?
Just out of curiosity, would you have no problem with Concordia changing its exam schedule so students could attend a Canadian Alliance convention? What if students wanted to protest against socialism outside an NDP leadership convention?
I assume you mean “If you weren’t being serious…”, and yes, they really are fencing off the whole downtown.
As I said above, nobody’s asking anyone to change the exam schedule. What’s happening is that students are being permitted to defer their examinations to the summer exam term. Everyone else writes their exams normally. And no, I would have no problem with another student deferring their exams for the reasons you mentioned.
How are those postions any less intellectually defensible than protest against the FTAA?
Please tell me I don’t have to explain the difference between people who think black people are subhuman and people who don’t believe that neoliberalism is a good thing.
Further news on the fence in Quebec City (in French from Radio-Canada):
[quote]
The wall will stretch out along 6 kilometers and will rise to three metres in certain places.
Careful with the assumptions there, chief. I’m a free trader.
That said, one of the articles from the National Post indicates that only about 50 or so students planned to attend the protests. With the number that small, I would rather that Universities grant deferrals on a case by case basis rather than as a blanket policy.
My spouse is a Professor in a medical school. A few years ago, two students came late to an examination. They requested extra time to finish it.
Their reason for being late was that they had driven to another state to buy lottery tickets, since the jackpot was large.
Extra time was not granted.
I was actually against the school’s position until I heard one piece of information: that students not participating will have the option of taking the exams at their normal time.
Before I heard this, I thought the University’s stance was absurd. How could they punish (and yes, that’s what they’re doing) those that either have no opinion or support the stance of those in the Summit?
But now it’s a bit different. Students that wish to protest can and still take their exams. Those that don’t want to can go on with life as normal. Heck, they can even get extra studying time if they want it!
Only two problems remain:
- Are professors being compensated for the extra work they’re putting in? As I see it, they’re the only ones really being inconvienenced by this decision. Granted, they’ll have a longer stretch of time to grade exams, but they’ll also have to proctor two exams AND make up two exams to eliminate cheating.
- Is this a slippery slope? What protests will be allowed, what won’t, and why? This is where the true debate lies.
I said “the cause satisfies their criteria” not to imply that you agree with the point of the protest, but, rather, in the sense that the cause meets your criteria for justifying an exam delay. And that’s my concern. What are the criteria to determine which “causes” are deserving of exam deferrals. I submit that it will be almost impossible to avoid being arbitrary in this regard, notwithstanding your brushing off my concerns with "“Oh, pshaw. ‘The only way to avoid being morally wrong is to eschew all flexibility.’ Bullshit.”
Hear me out KarlG please. The U’s in question already allow for some students to postpone their finals. They already make individual decisions about this. Although they most likely would grant the request if some one’s parent died or the student was scheduled for an operation that day, but I would imagine that if Student A comes in sobbing “my grandma just died”, but they see in his records that this is the fourth grandma that’s died in the past year, they’d deny the request. Or Student B comes in saying “my fifth cousin four times removed is having a hang nail removed that day, I must be there for her…” request denied.
I see no appreciable difference here, except that they notified the students ahead of time that they would consider it. In addition, according to the follow up info, there’s a total of 50 students from all 3 U’s?? this is not a big deal IMHO.
Bad matt!! As you well know, The Ryan was not asserting that supporting the KKK and protesting against the FTAA were equivalent. Instead he was asking how anti-globalism is any more intellectually defensible than the KKK. Good intentioned people can be as stupid as bad-intentioned people. No one here was giving the two causes moral equivalency.
As the OP - I was with manhattan until he said that schools should not defer exams if students wanted to go off to a Klan rally. Colleges should treat their students as customers, and if a large percentage of students wanted to go to a Klan rally, it shouldn’t be treated any differently than any other cause. What is the “central goal” of a University that allows them to treat causes they don’t like differently than other causes? This is the attitude that has led to rampant PC-ism on campuses.
Sua
But that’s the thing. It’s, like, a billion times easier than your trying to make it. 1) Will enough of our customers be going to this event that good customer service dictates that we consider rescheduling exams or providing another opportunity to take them? 2) Is the event anathema, given our purpose?
Violent anti-choice rally? Anathema.
Peaceful anti-choice rally? Not Anathema
KKK rally? Anathema.
Anti-free trade rally? Not Anathema.
Pro-free trade rally? Not Anathema.
Any other causes you’d like me to make the determination on? Or has it finally dawned on you that I do not consider “free trade” to rise to the level of anathema to a university’s mission, whereas I do consider the KKK (for example) to be so, and that I’m correct in making that determination, and that it doesn’t take a professional ethicist to do so?
Karl, this molehill ain’t gonna grow into a mountain, no matter how much manure you shovel on it. Let it go.
Several posters seem to assume that colleges should treat students as consumers. While I agree with this on some fronts having to do with student life (e.g. offering events that the largest number of students will enjoy, organizing housing to make as many people as possible happy, etc.), should the consumer model really be applied to the academic portions of the college experience? For example, I and nearly all of the biology majors that I know loathe organic chemistry. Since nearly all of the “consumers” hate this requirement that is being placed on them, shouldn’t the college remove it in order to attract more “consumers”? I don’t know many people who enjoyed freshman English - should they not be required to take it anyway? If there are very few physics majors, should the college drop the department because of lack of demand?
Anything that the college wants to set up as an exception to its own rules is OK by me, as long as the exception is a blanket one - all protests are acceptable. This leads to all of the issues above, which I don’t think that I need to repeat. It’s very hard to put in the rules something like “Students will be allowed to defer exams in order to attend those demonstrations deemed acceptable by the administration” - then one gets into the issue of who’s judging what’s OK and the possibility of those in charge only permitting students to attend those demonstrations that they (the admins) agree with. In abstract, it’s fine to say that peaceable, generally acceptable demonstrations are OK, but who’s doing the defining and permitting?
Oh, and many schools won’t cancel class for whatever reason if a large percentage will be gone. I attend a school that is (conservatively estimated) a quarter to a third Jewish, and we don’t get off for Yom Kippur, let alone the other holidays. Classes are pretty empty, but they go on.
Apparently, Manhattan is.
Well, here of course the issues gets much more complicated because we move away from piddling stuff like scheduling and right into the core of “what is a university?”
In a very real sense, students are not only the consumer of education, but they are themselves the product, and universities have to keep that in mind when they design curricula. A university worth its salt would tell a biology major seeking to avoid organic chemistry that perhaps a change in major is in order, because without that background, one is not a biologist, a parchment saying so notwithstanding.
Likewise, a school with a predominately technical outlook (say Virginia Tech) might reasonably resist student pressure to increase the literature requirements, just as a vegetarian restaurant might resist pressure for meat dishes – “why did you come to this establishment, where there are alternatives which fit your desires already out there?” is a legitimate question for both institutions in this case.
Whilst I think any college worth being accredited would offer physics as part of its science curriculum, it seems perfectly OK to me if there is a liberal arts college out there that does not keep the infrastructure to offer a physics major if demand is not there – better to re-allocate those resources to make sure all the students get a well-rounded education in the sciences, and let the MITs of the world put their resources into creating a place for physics specialists.
And you are right, of course – colleges routinely fail to reschedule things even if many of their students would be adversely affected by the schedule. That is their right – it’s just isn’t good customer service.
And yes, Karl, I am. And I’m doing a kick-ass job at it, too!
Naw, I’m not. I’m simply saying that it is not unreasonable to hope for good judgment from wise people in matters such as this. A world where everything were decided off a schedule somewhere would be a pretty dismal one indeed.
You’re oversimplifiying what the consumers want. They may not enjoy organic chem, but they do generally want to earn a degree that gives them some value, either in the job market or to grad schools. The main draw of a university is it’s reputation, and that’s related to difficulty. They’d ultimately lose a lot more customers than they’d gain by cutting a class that fundamental to the curriculum. Organic chem (to poorly paraphrase the addage about writing) isn’t something you want to do, but it is something you want to have done.
In the four years I was in college (okay, six), my school cut several programs and added several others because of demand. Not sure why that seems so unreasonable.
Um, yeah. What he said.
Please ignore the preceding simulpost. Then ignore this one.
What’s the difference between being intellectually and morally defensible? How can something morally repugnant be intellectually defended in any coherent fashion?
Either The Ryan is suggesting that the position of the KKK could be something about which reasonable people could disagree, or he is suggesting that the defenders of the FTAA may be the intellectual equals of Klansmen. I find the first suggestion ludicrous and the second hideously insulting.
Besides, as clarified above, there is no reason to suppose that by allowing students to defer their exams to protest in Quebec, a university would find itself ethically, legally, or otherwise obligated to do the same to let other students protest in Skokie.
*Originally posted by matt_mcl *
**What’s the difference between being intellectually and morally defensible? How can something morally repugnant be intellectually defended in any coherent fashion? **
matt, you’re only asking one of the questions. Yes, something that is morally repugnant cannot be intellectually defended, but the opposite isn’t necessarily true - something “good” doesn’t make it intellectually defensible. A simple example - a morally “good” idea to end poverty in the US would be to give the lower (economically) third of the population $1 billion each. However, it’s not intellectually defensible, as the result would be hyperinflation.
Either The Ryan is suggesting that the position of the KKK could be something about which reasonable people could disagree, or he is suggesting that the defenders of the FTAA may be the intellectual equals of Klansmen. I find the first suggestion ludicrous and the second hideously insulting.
Well, The Ryan wasn’t suggesting either (BTW, I think you meant “opponents of the FTAA” ;)). He was suggesting that the cause of anti-globalism is about as intellectually defensible as the cause of racial seperatism. No comparison, intellectual or moral, between the people who adhere to these causes was made.
If you still find that hideously insulting, well, that’s your problem, not The Ryan’s.
Sua