Moebius Stripper

polytechnic. Mostly 2-year diplomas, with some 4-year degrees and 1-year certificates mixed in, as well as flexible part-time programs. The students are all in cohort programs - they take all their classes together. Average student age is mid-20s so most have postsecondary and/or work experience.

I'm seeing the full spectrum. There's, eg, this extremely demoralizing experience. This is a minority of my students, but they have an outsized effect on my morale. But I also have dozens of students who are bright, curious, ambitious, and well-adjusted, and it's a privilege to work with them.

I'm also curious as to what sort of work the other students turned in. I suspect that at least one of them produced an essay that was also poorly argued and drew on non-academic sources, but instead the bible, it was some TikTok influencer or whatever the kids are watching these days

It's becoming increasingly clear that this is unfolding exactly how the student (and her mother, a MAGA activist) intended. I can't be the only person who thinks that it is extremely damning that the great minds of the *psychology department* played right into her hands.

Hunh, Clearsky no longer shows blocklists. Now how will I know what a contemptible person I am???

Awesome! It's a magical treatment and I'm happy to spread the gospel.

I own a pair of loafers that are my 3rd or 4th of the same make and model in ~20 years, and the size has faded off and I'm afraid that I'll get the wrong size if I try ordering them online again. (I remember that they were sized large but I don't remember how large...)

It amazes me that online shoe-buying is even a thing. Even I buy new shoes in person and I hate shopping! I have ordered shoes online but they're always just identical replacements for shoes that have worn out, and people like me can't possibly be propping up the entire industry

Yeah, fortunately the Greenbelt is there. Alas, that's where I caught Lyme disease last summer, so it's just a different kind of risk.

I don't know if driver's ed explicitly emphasizes "look BOTH WAYS, not just left, before turning right", but it needs to emphasize it more. Drivers are not expecting pedestrians, and I know too many pedestrians who almost got hit that way (and one who actually did)

Gonna point out again that senior university administrators get paid extremely well - the president of the University of Oklahoma makes $500k/year - specifically to deal with bullshit. Most of us don't get paid enough to deal with internet shitstorms, but this dude does!

There's a whole extra layer to this when Canadian Jews are being accused of being complicit "because our tax dollars are going to arm Israel". *Canadian* tax dollars are actually not going to any such thing (whereas they do go to UNRWA) but even pointing that out makes you "complicit" in some way.

Mazel tov

The flip side of this that if I give a zero on submitted work, then it's because there's nothing that even slightly resembles mathematics in it.

"Empathy shouldn't be the main consideration when grading a student's work," one might say, and I would agree heartily and also suggest that it also shouldn't be the main consideration in other things

Also, the TA taking the student to task for insulting her classmates (okay, fair) whose "opinions are just as valuable as yours" which I guess means that the classmates also have dumb opinions that are lacking in empathy?

I just noticed that TA recommended that the student "apply some more empathy" after giving her a zero, which is just so hilariously of this moment

The only SPF 50+ I've ever bought is reserved for a certain 15yo.

This is how I feel about every "how to look like you're not wearing makeup" guide

16 degrees, oh no, you poor baby, should I mail you some mittens

Seriously, it's 2025. You put sentences together by your own damn self? That's definitely not a zero and might even be an automatic pass.

I had to generalize from "math-shaped", based on my personal ethos of "if you showed up at 8:30 and wrote the quiz, then I am going to do my damnedest to find a reason to give you a mark of at least 1/10" (not always easy)

I'm not an essay-prof and I don't know what the standards at that school are, but my layperson take is "it's not a good paper, but the student answered the question, if badly, which means that it should not have gotten a zero." An F might have been justified but not a zero.

I don't know if anything more specific was released, but apparently (eg www.oklahoman.com/story/opinio...) students were supposed to write a "response to an article about how people are perceived based on societal expectations of gender". It wasn't supposed to be a formal paper.

Zeroes are precious commodities. If a student doesn't submit the homework and has no excuse, that's a zero. If they produce something that is vaguely homework-shaped, that should be not a zero. I always try to find at least one mark on a quiz out of ten.

Also, whenever I read a story about a TA going rogue, I assume (based on ~lived experience~) that the TA was not given clear *or even any* guidelines by the supervising professor

A lot of the time, the answer is "there's a problem here, but it calls for a non-nuclear option" (in this case, two nuclear options were deployed: giving the student a zero, and firing the zero-giver. Do we want people to learn and grow, or just to be punished?)

My take on all this stuff is that in deciding how to handle these kinds of viral situations, university administrators should ask themselves, "how would/should we have handled this if it hadn't gone viral?" and then do that.

this has been true and problematic for an appallingly long time regardless of the political viewpoint of any particular online mob that discovered they could harass university administrators into doing what they wanted

I hope this information is useful!