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I had an undergraduate hand in a completely unreadable term paper as part of a chemistry class for healthcare professional majors.
She was struggling in the class: a D-caliber student who constantly chatted with her friends in the back of the classroom during my review sessions. The term paper was worth something like 20% of the final grade, and if she got a D or lower on it, then regardless of her performance on the final, she'd be locked in to a D for the class.
The paper topic was about the ozone layer, and it was a loser from beginning to end: a total fundamental lack of understanding of the chemistry, and rife with grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors. I graded it a D, both for content and style.
After getting back her paper, she came to me in my lab and said incredulously, "You gave me a D? You know that means I'm going to get a D for the class!"
I said, "I'm sorry. I realize your situation, but you clearly didn't show any grasp for the material, and your paper was also poorly written. Compared to the other papers I read, this was D-quality material."
She asked if she could speak to the professor and appeal to him, and I said she was free to do so. A week later, the final exam came and went, and I think she may have gotten a C or C- on it, and I submit my final grades to the professor.
About two months later, I'm walking across campus with a graduate student from the professor's group. We talk about teaching assignments for the quarter, and he matter-of-factly asks that I must be relieved to no longer be TA'ing for his professor.
Actually, the experience wasn't that bad, I told him. The prof had a reputation for being a hardass with the students in his research group, but teaching for him was really fine.
My friend says, "after what you went through with XXX XXX (name removed), you'd still want to teach for my advisor?"
At this point, I had no idea what he was talking about. I gave XXX a D on her paper, she asked me about it, I directed her to the professor, and I never saw her again. Was there more to the story than I knew? Apparently, yes.
Student XXX decided that if she couldn't earn a decent grade in our class, she would sue for one. After being rebuffed by the professor, she went to the department chairman and CHARGED ME AND THE PROFESSOR WITH SEXUAL HARRASSMENT. She threatened to go public with her accusations unless she got a "C."
My reaction to this revelation was something like this: :wow:.
Obviously, I can't vouch for the professor, but when someone levels an accusation like that at me, shouldn't I have been notified? I would've countersued her for slander and defamation of character so fast, her head would've spun. At the time, I had been married for 6 months- the very notion that someone would impugn me in that way infuriated me.
Unfortunately, I was not given that opportunity. The department chair went over everyone's head and changed her grade to a C. The professor slinked back into his lab and never spoke about it to me.
And as for me? To this day, I wonder what I would've done had I been told what was happening at the time. With my honor, possibly my marriage, and the basic ethics of scholarship under attack by this sleaze, I would have gladly emptied my bank account to utterly destroy that woman.
Perhaps it's better that I didn't know.
-MR
P.S. Can you tell that I'm still bitter about this?
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