I love how you accuse the students of not going back to see what the context was, in a post that demonstrate you haven’t gone back to see what the context was.
You may disagree with their complaint, but the way you’ve done so is pretty hilarious.
Your persistent framing of the situation as though it were a question of how to sentence criminals for a crime is nonsensical and misleading.
The consequences for the students are simply that people will react to the content of their accusation on its merits. If you write something insightful, people will think you are perceptive. If you write something foolish, people will think you are stupid. If you write something ridiculous, people will ridicule you. To call those changes in people’s perceptions as “punishment” is bizarre and misleading. We all own the consequences of our actions in how they influence what people think about us.
What we were doing here until you went on this digression about “punishment” was discussing the merits of the accusation. The difference between us is not in our views on “punishment”. The difference is simply a difference of opinion on the merits of their accusation. I think it’s a ridiculous and irresponsible accusation, you do not.
Meh. For you to take his talk about “punishment” and turn it into talk about “how to sentence criminals” is pretty whackadoodle. Maybe don’t misrepresent someone when you’re calling them misleading?
There’s a range of how reasonable their accusations are:
- I agree with them 100%!
- I think they’re mostly right, but in some places they make errors of fact.
- I think they’re broadly right, but they go too far and don’t recognize nuance.
- I’m not sure, or I’m of two minds, about their accusations.
- I disagree with their accusations but understand why they made them.
- In this case they’re wrong, but given the history of pervasive racism, no harm no foul.
- They’re totally wrong, but hey, college students, whaddya gonna do?
- They’re super wrong and should face humiliation and ridicule for how wrong they are.
- They, uh, should face criminal charges?
I’m probably between 3 and 5 on that scale. You seem to be about an 8. Nobody except you is talking about 9.
The merits of the students’ accusation, and the linguistic facts. Where do their actions fall in the range from reasonable to ridiculous/irresponsible?
I think it’s worth reviewing what the students actually did, because pretty much everything hinges on that. Several people have said things like - the students had reasonable suspicions; they made the accusation in good faith; they did their research, they consulted with native speakers. Even if it turns out they were wrong on the linguistic facts, what should they have done? They had a legitimate concern and acted appropriately in raising their concern. So is that perspective fair?
First of all, there were evidently no other grounds for harboring suspicion about the professor. There is no suggestion that he had any prior reputation for making dubious “edgy” jokes, and no prior suspicion of racist speech or action. So the students’ accusation is based entirely on what he said in this lecture.
They claimed the following:
“It was confirmed that the pronunciation of this word is much different than what Professor Patton described in class…The word is most commonly used with a pause in between both syllables… In addition, we have lived abroad in China and have taken Chinese language courses at several colleges and this phrase, clearly and precisely before instruction is always identified as a phonetic homonym and a racial derogatory term, and should be carefully used, especially in the context of speaking Chinese within the social context of the United States.”
All their linguistic claims are completely wrong. Patton used the standard pronunciation in Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM), and he used it in the ubiquitously colloquial repetitive manner. There is never a break between syllables. If you got on a bus in Beijing and listened, I would put the over-under at around 10 minutes until you hear someone use the filler in exactly the way Patton said it. (And there are, in fact, regional non-MSM variants that sound much closer to the English slur than the standard MSM pronunciation that he used.)
Furthermore, their notion that a word used with the combined frequency of “that” and “um” in English is invariably preceded by a trigger warning in language classes is nonsense. Of course it may have been in some elementary classes that they took, but that doesn’t imply that’s it’s widely seen as necessary or appropriate when teaching mature adults.
So how could the students have got their facts so badly wrong? None of the possibilities reflect well on them. Any native MSM speaker who simply watched the tape could have told them exactly what I wrote above. One possibility is that they are simply lying about consulting with native speakers, and they relied on their own inadequate elementary knowledge of Chinese. Giving them the benefit of the doubt that they are not lying, the only other possibility is that their research was simply shoddy. The following things are true and may account for their misconceptions:
(1) 那个 when it means “that” is usually pronounced na-ge. And this does sound less like the slur. However, when it’s used as a filler it is almost invariably pronounced nei-ge, just as Patton said it.
(2) The nei-ge pronunciation probably originated as a contraction of the 3-syllable 那一个 na-yi-ge meaning “that one”, and a native speaker may have told them this. But the pronunciation nei-ge has two syllables, there is never a pause between.
So I can imagine that if they asked questions of a native speaker about the word “that” (那个) without explaining the full circumstances or playing the tape, they may have received snippets of some of the information above that they misunderstood and cherry-picked to fit their preconceptions.
So with no prior reason to suspicious, the students carried out shoddy incomplete research (how hard is it find a native MSM speaker and play them the tape?) to generate erroneous evidence that fit their preconceptions, and then wrote this hyperbolic accusation that could obviously have devastating consequences for the professor:
“Our mental health has been affected…it is an uneasy feeling allowing him to have the power over our grades. We would rather not take his course than to endure the emotional exhaustion of carrying on with an instructor that disregards cultural diversity and sensitivities and by extension creates an unwelcome environment for us Black students…
"In light of the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the recent and continued collective protests and social awakening across the nation, we cannot let this stand…
Aside from potential harm to Patton, it harms the BLM movement’s fight against the actual racism that’s rife in this country to make careless and hyperbolic accusations. It gives ammunition to the right wing narrative of “political correctness gone mad”.
It’s not sufficient that their accusation was made “in good faith”. Impact matters as well as intent. These are graduate students, not 14-year-olds. They failed utterly in their due diligence. They were lazy in their research and sought out facts to fit a preconceived narrative. The knew the consequences of their accusation would be serious, and as mature adults they should have done much better.
None of those posters were me, so why bring me into it? And yeah, I actually do wonder what they’ve been taught. Sure I wrote something hyperbolic, but their reaction was pretty damn hyperbolic too.
Don’t be disingenuous. I’ve spent enough time here arguing against that sort of thing.
The charitable part was not assuming their ‘emotional exhaustion’ and inability to focus on their studies were simply due to hearing certain syllables, as Volokh does. I suspect you agree with that part.
Perhaps you could highlight the part in the students’ letter where they accuse the professor of doing this, or of trying to be humorous? As far as I know this is something you simply made up and has no relevance to the case.
This none-too-subtle implication that I’m somehow advocating criminal charges is utterly bogus, and the diametric opposite of what I said. I said quite clearly that the only likely and appropriate consequence for the students is that people’s opinion of them may be influenced as a result of the poor judgment they showed in writing this accusation; and for @k9bfriender to characterize that as “punishment” is simply not what the word punishment means in common usage.
This is merely speculation, but maybe the students didn’t have the video when they made their accusation. They also accused the professor of stopping the zoom recording before saying the word in question and restarting it afterwards (and yet the video exists, so…?). If they didn’t accurately remember what the professor said it could explain why their Mandarin speaking friends told them it’s usually pronounced differently. Doesn’t explain where they got the idea there is usually a pause in the middle, though.
It’s possible, but given that it exists, what’s the likelihood that it wouldn’t have been made available to them if they had asked? Especially if they explained why they were asking?
I implied no such thing. This is the second time you’ve bizarrely thought someone was accusing you of that. I was saying not only that you hadn’t said that, but that nobody else said you said that either. You keep reading bananas accusations into what other people are saying, and it’s making it very difficult to converse with you.
Despite no actual harm to the reporters, they all chose to harm an innocent party.
In a perfect world, police, deans, HR, CPS will always get it right. But right now, they don’t. And that’s worth thinking about before making the call or sending the email.
And it hardly takes any imagination to come up with examples of non-randos. People call the cops on their neighbors all the time, with varrying and often questionable justification. Workers report misheard statements to HR. Mentally ill relative is having a rough time? Calling the cops might not have the desired result for anyone.
Sometimes calling/etc. is still the right call. But then we still have the choice of how we couch the message. Something might be wrong vs I-am-under-attack.
You could have made that argument instead of asking. Perhaps you will, eventually, although ridicule may ensue.
Arguments don’t end with question marks. And these students didn’t just “complain…that their teacher used potentially problematic language.” They sent a factually incorrect diatribe flat out stating that his correct and relevant lesson, and the way millions of people speak, is unacceptable. And that they couldn’t possibly be in a class taught by him.
Are you interpreting their statement about language class as saying that it is preceded by a warning before every use? Because I don’t take that sentence that way. I think they are saying it is preceded by a warning before the word is introduced in class, which sounds perfectly plausible to me.
Interesting. Try this:
It’s not sufficient that the lesson on filler words was made “in good faith”. Impact matters as well as intent. This is a communications professor giving a preplanned lesson, not some native-Chinese speaker just talking. He failed utterly to consider his audience. He was lazy in choosing an example without fully contextualizing it or using an alternative with less downside. He knew the consequences of a misunderstanding would be serious (or even catastrophic for himself), and as a mature adult and a communications professor, he should have done much better.
(Note, I still haven’t seen anything that makes me think he should have been suspended, if that is what happened to him.)
Well we’re in agreement on that. He thought he was lecturing graduate students who possessed a modicum of common sense and critical thinking skills.
Ok, for those who still don’t understand the difference between “punishment” and people forming negative opinions about what you do or say, let me try again.
Suppose I call someone a troll in GD. I get a warning. That’s a punishment.
Suppose I write a piece in IMHO explaining why the earth is flat. Since what I wrote is ridiculous, people might ridicule what I wrote in their responses. Since I’m an adult, based on what I have written people might conclude that I’m pretty stupid. Is it accurate to call any of these consequences, including the impact on my reputation, a “punishment”?
Since @k9bfriender apparently fails to understand the distinction between these two scenarios, and persistently characterizes expressing a negative opinion on the merits of what someone writes as “punishing” them, I don’t think I’m whackadoodle for pointing out the distinction. Although I am somewhat perplexed that I need to point it out.
This level of nitpickery is not especially interesting. I knew what he meant by the word “punishment”; it was pretty clear. Deciding to do a deep dive into whether that word was precisely accurate is the kind of nonsense that makes this board really tiresome sometimes.
The tiresome nonsense was when @k9bfriender moved away from discussing the actual merits of the accusation and went into extensive digressions about how apparently we shouldn’t be doing that because it violates USC policy, and we are “punishing” the students if we express negative views on the way they behaved and what they wrote.
Obviously.
After looking at all available information, what should have happened, IMHO:
The Dean should have investigated, discovered the professor’s pronunciation was perfectly standard and common, and the example apt. He should have asked the professor to give a warning beforehand in future, and pointed him to some examples of how language teachers handle it. Then he should have written to the students explaining that he had done this, including evidence of the standard Mandarin pronunciation.
Does that sound reasonable?
Never mind that the students are completely anonymous; it’s not like anyone is being singled out here.
That’s perfectly reasonable, except that…
- ...the previous dean was fired for ignoring allegations of racism.
So I guess his successor would rather take the risk of overreacting than underreacting.
Except apparently it’s more complicated than that: