The course professor did review and approve the grade. I can’t find their comment online at the moment, but they did also address the student with an explanation of the grade.
ETA: here it is
Before the fracas or afterward? If before, the instructor of record is the grader of record, not the TA. Reviewing a potential failing grade beforehand gives the instructor the opportunity to say to the TA, “The grade and feedback must be explicitly associated with the grading criteria.”
ETA, thanks for posting your ETA.
I think what’s “unreasonable” about the student’s point of view, in the context of the assignment’s stated goals and assessment criteria, is that it didn’t really address the content of the published article at all, which it was clearly supposed to do.
The article is addressing whether gender typicality (not even trans vs. cis gender identity per se, but also gender nonconformity among cis kids) biases peers towards negative perceptions of low-gender-typicality kids. And, crucially, whether it’s the effects of that socially inflicted negativity, rather than the low typicality itself, that produces worse mental health outcomes in low-typicality kids.
The student’s essay engaged with NONE of that. She basically just went off on a rant about “trans is bad and God wants cis!”
(Even from a Christian-doctrine standpoint, writing an essay about an article that studies schoolchildren bullying their peers for their appearance, and not pointing out that being cruel to the lowly and despised is an un-Christian shitty thing to do, is a big old fail. Do these hate-filled Christian bigots imagine that when Jesus went to dine with tax collectors and prostitutes, he was trying to encourage people hating on social outcasts?)
That said, the graduate TA should not have taken the bait, but should have used the grading as a teaching moment for why having sincere beliefs doesn’t excuse you from complying with the specifications of the assignment, rather than getting drawn into trying to argue about the beliefs themselves.
And yes, all the grading protocols rightly mentioned by @susan, including the policy of having professors automatically review TAs’ proposed failing grades before the graded assignment is returned, should have been followed to avoid this kind of situation.
[followed by a long list of other possible approaches]
Hate to say this, but I think that’s what the student did: provided a personal reaction discussing why she felt the topic is not worthy of study.
Downgrading for not showing she’d read any of it beyond the bullying bit, sure. Downgrading for lack of citations, sure. Downgrading for giving a personal reaction when a personal reaction is what was asked for doesn’t seem reasonable. I disagree with just about every word the student wrote, but how could she have been expected to give an honest personal reaction that agrees with me when she doesn’t agree with me (or with the instructor?)
I don’t think she did, though. She says she thinks bullying trans kids is a good thing. That doesn’t preclude it from being studied. We think gender affirming care is a good thing and we study it to make sure our assumptions are correct.
Reasons it might not be worthy of study might be ethical (we’d have to allow trans kids to get bullied to study the effects on them), practical (bullying is too subjective) or whatever. But she doesn’t attempt to make any arguments on the merits of it as a research topic. She simply states her personal opinion about why bullying is great and then talks about Christianity for 600 words.
But the topic in question wasn’t “is it okay to be trans”. The topic was “does bullying people about their gender-nonconformity result in mental-health impacts that are mistakenly attributed to the gender-nonconformity itself”.
Just explaining why you personally feel that Jesus doesn’t want people to be trans doesn’t get within a city block of discussing whether the actual paper topic is worthy of study. [ETA: as @steronz said.]
Agreed. Whatever my personal views of the student and her essay, the instructor fell for the bait and screwed themself.
The essay should have gotten some points, simply because part of the rubric seems to just require something quasi-coherent. And the essay, however bothersome, is a somewhat coherent presentation of a viewpoint I have zero respect for. But the instructor screwed up by going beyond something like, “Answer did not address whether topic is worthy of study - [continue through rubric]…. Assignment was to provide a thoughtful reaction to the article, not to simply present your personal beliefs.”
Pretty clear example of my premise that I’ve never gotten in trouble for what I DIDN’T say/write.
I might have agreed with you if the student had made more of an effort to tie her responses to specific points in the article. From my (rather quick) reading of her essay, it seems she briefly acknowledged the article, and then just went into her own beliefs.
Not in Oklahoma they don’t. Or at least not in the Oklahoma folks like that are creating as fast as they can. They are the overwhelming majority. And they intend to make sure everyone else knows it and obeys.
Not in Oklahoma she doesn’t. The trans crowd just needs to slink off to some other state. That’s their mainstream opinion and they’re sticking to it. Along with the large majority of the rest of Oklahoma’s “good people on both sides.”
I am as disgusted as you are. Perhaps more. But IMO to call that student out as wrong in their social context is factually incorrect. She embodies their F***ing context.
I sincerely hope the best universities consider a high school diploma from a school in Oklahoma as deeply suspect and worthy of extra scrutiny.
That will probably get them into trouble though so, instead, the best universities should mandate a test for all incoming students. A test someone steeped in Red State bullshit would find difficult to pass.
And I would hope the best businesses (law firms, hospitals, research, finance, take your pick) will be dubious of anyone with a degree from a Red State university. If I were an employer I would certainly think twice about an applicant from those places. Not saying it disqualifies them outright but I’d be more careful before hiring one of them.
We’re rapidly getting that way. I’m imagining a sort of red/blue apartheid settling in.
The problem is with the Federal government, plus ~30 states’ governments firmly in Red hands, we know which side of US apartheid is going to be the underclass.
You can have whatever opinions you want. But if you ask me to grade an essay whose thesis is that kids should be bullied for not conforming to gender norms (or that black people are subhuman, or gay people should be chemically castrated, or some other horribly offensive opinion) you are getting zero points from me. No way I’m giving you a mark for grammar if you’re advocating for genocide.
At the end of the day (most) companies want to make the most money and want the best people to help them do that and care little about dogma. Assuming competence is the main criteria (and not, “I know a guy”) I’d think/hope companies would prefer the better educated candidates which would almost certainly come from liberal universities.
That said, for jobs like a pilot, not sure what to do. Doubtless a red hat pilot can fly the plane well but you have to sit next to that person for hours. Dunno how that plays out.
In my view being a rageaholic is a disqualifying emotional condition. Being thoroughly unreality-based is too.
But if the FAA sided with me the skies would be much quieter tomorrow.
If I had to guess, I’d say the majority of the professional pilots I’ve flown with lean conservative. A few I’ve known believed what I’d term crazy nonsense, like the moon landings being faked. But in each case, they were good pilots.
My experience is that most pilots used to working in a crew environment know not to talk politics, religion or other hot button topics. Not just because it could create an HR problem, but I think they realize it makes for an unhappy workplace to have an argument and then have to sit 10 inches from the person for the rest of the week. Only occasionally did I have my flying partner try to instigate those kinds of discussions, but it was dropped when they realized I wasn’t interested in participating.
Only twice did I make an exception when I knew the person well enough that I was assured we could disagree without it becoming a problem. In both cases, they were unusual people - intelligent and with a good sense of humor, despite holding some opinions I found troubling.
All this to say, believing in unkind or even crazy stuff doesn’t preclude someone from being a professional pilot. Or a doctor, as we unfortunately see in the case of the pre-med Oklahoma student.
As a teacher, I think the instructor could have taken another path by evaluating the essay on its merits, deeming it poorly argued and still given a failing grade. Seems to me the student was being intentionally unkind though.
You mean like this guy? 
See: Ben Carson. Full on nutjob but, by all accounts I have read, a genuinely excellent neurosurgeon. Go figure.
(I mention him because he was a cabinet member under Trump in his first term so a public figure…he also ran for president so there’s that too.)
IMHO the essay was a total pile of bullshit. I can’t say whether, according to the school standards, it deserved 0% or 10%, but it was an indisputable Fail.
I didn’t see anything obviously wrong in a quick read of the teacher’s comments. I think it’s disappointing that they were suspended, and I strongly suspect it was due to the Turning Point lunatics (the Charlie Kirk crowd).
Yeah that’s definitely fair. They see their own views as facts and logic, not bias at all. They are highly trained to spot bias in opposing views, none at all in their own.
There’s a separate and more elaborate point I was trying to touch on, which is that they push a narrative that all bias is wrong, and any piece of journalism can be summarily dismissed if you can detect that the author seems to favor one point of view. This is wrong, all journalism is biased, and I would agree that an openly biased piece can have greater coherence and resonance, provided that the bias isn’t concealed. I can make more sense of what you’re saying if you tell me how you lean, even if I disagree. The majority of university professors I’ve had have been strongly biased in one direction or the other, and it helped clarify the material for me.
That’s an important point here, because that’s what’s being weaponized against the trans professor. In reality, they made some elaborately good points and were careful to say that they weren’t discounting the student because of their leanings. They were correct on every count and not opaque about their own bias, but the very presence of bias is apparently a punishable offence, even though the essay itself was wildly biased, bigoted, and deficient.
I’m not sure that anything shy of an A+ would have stopped her and her associated grifters from running with the “I’M BEING PERSECUTED FOR MY FAITH!” narrative.
You can’t meet someone in the middle when they were never acting in good faith to begin with.
You’re right that this was the goal and they were always going to try it, but I think the TA/professor took the bait and made the task a lot easier. Particularly by stating “this is offensive” which is the “cha-ching” moment where the setup paid off.