This one is so messed up in so many ways.
A student in a veterinary medicine class at UC Davis recently gave birth. Her delivery came near the beginning of the semester, and it was unclear how many classes — and quizzes — she would miss. Her professor wasn’t sure how to deal with this situation…
So he asked her fellow students to vote on what her grade should be.
Yep. He instructed the student “presidents” of the class to send around an email proposing six possible approaches to the problem, and announcing that the class would be conducting an online vote on which one to adopt. The choices were these:
a) automatic A final grade
b) automatic B final grade
c) automatic C final grade
d) graded the same as everyone else: best 6 quiz scores out of a possible 7 quiz scores (each quiz only given only once in class with no repeats)
e) just take a % of quiz scores (for example: your classmate takes 4 quizzes, averages 9/10 points = 90% = A)
f) give that student a single final exam at the end of the quarter (however this option is only available to this one student, all others are graded on the best 6 quiz scores and the % that results)
Isis, the blogger who broke the story, calls this a “shameful” act of “gender discrimination,” which it is. She also notes that the university has policies on incompletes and medical leave which would apply to this situation. Finally, she notes that making this kind of decision is a professor’s job:
The other part of this that bothers me is that it is not the responsibility or privilege of students in a graduate program to determine the fate of their peers. This is why there are graduate faculty and if Dr. Feldman was truly so baffled about what to do with this student, he should have turned to his peers or more senior university officials for guidance.
This wasn’t a new faculty member or a grad student, by the way. The professor who did this, Edward C. Feldman, is a department chair. Reached for comment yesterday, he had this response to an Inside Higher Education reporter: “I don’t care what people say. It is between me, my students and my school.”
Grading fairly and ethically is one of a professor’s most serious obligations. To see it treated so recklessly is shocking to me, and I’m not easily shocked.
Update | I was too busy boggling to point this out in the original post, but four of the six options provided to the students strike me as pretty obviously unethical, however they were arrived at. To give a student an unearned grade (whatever that grade may be) is completely improper, as is flunking a student on a test missed for a legitimate medical reason.
studentactivism.net 
15 comments
Comments feed for this article
January 14, 2011 at 11:29 am
David Parry
Let’s leave aside the fact that there is clearly a gender discrimination issue here. On that account I totally agree with your analysis. But, on the issue of letting the other students have input on the grade while problematic, I am not sure I am willing to go down the road of total dismissal.
Let’s imagine a situation where the student missed a class for an understandable, but unexcused reason, let’s say a relatives funeral. Let’s also imagine that said student had already missed the maximum number of allowable classes (whatever that number is). If the professor grants an exception and lets the student make up a test, or average out the other tests, he/she is being somewhat unfair to the others. In the respect I think, especially at the graduate level a syllabus is not a contract between the student and the professor, but rather amongst all the students, a community of learners. So letting the other students have input on realigning said contract doesn’t seem so outside of normal to me, or certainly acceptable if done correctly.
This is not to defend the cavalier way it appears the professor in this case carried out this grade change policy, but rather to suggest that asking for student input on grading policy can be done, and might in fact be a good policy, but if and only if done correctly.
January 14, 2011 at 11:41 am
Kristen
I wonder how other pregnant students are treated across professional degree programs. Young women with children can still excel in their careers, and people should not discourage them from doing so.
January 14, 2011 at 11:45 am
Greg
Why does Dr Feldman think it was between, as he puts it, ‘me, my students and my school’? I would have thought some kind of privacy rule should apply so that one student’s personal circumstance was not thrown open to general discussion by the other students in her class. That’s not the thing to do, is it?
January 14, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Angus Johnston
I hear what you’re saying, David, but as a professor I disagree.
I can think of circumstances in which it would be ethical for students to participate in establishing grading policies for an entire class. If a prof were to announce, for instance, at the beginning of the semester, that the grading system for a particular course was going to be established by the class as a whole, that could work. (It’s not something I’ve ever seriously considered myself, but I’ve read accounts of classrooms where it’s been done responsibly and effectively.)
But in the absence of that, bringing students into the process on an ad hoc basis strikes me as hugely problematic, for a bunch of reasons.
First, the question of how to handle an unexcused absence is one that should be resolved ethically by the professor. The prof should have policies — whether explicitly announced or not — in place, and should implement those policies consistently from case to case and from semester to semester.
Second, allowing students to determine a particular colleague’s grade opens the door to all sorts of abuse. What if the student in question is disliked by her classmates? What if she’s really well liked? There’s no way of following fair and consistent principles if these kinds of decisions are put to a majority (or worse, plurality!) vote.
Third, there’s a real danger of encouraging students to attempt to game the system in the future. The consequences of a student’s actions should be made as clear as possible in advance, and it’s just not possible to provide that kind of clarity if those consequences are going to be determined by an after-the-fact vote.
I completely agree with your characterization of a syllabus as a contract, and I think far too few professors approach it that way. But that contract, by default, is properly understood as contract between the professor and each individual student, and to construe it any other way requires a lot of careful thought and preparation in advance.
January 14, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Angus Johnston
Kristen — the university apparently has procedures in place for this kind of absence, and this professor’s deviation from those procedures is likely to prompt an internal investigation.
Greg — the privacy issues here are really big ones. There’s a discussion going on in comments at the Inside Higher Ed site as to whether and how FERPA, the federal student records privacy law, might apply in this case.
January 14, 2011 at 3:00 pm
What We Missed
[…] UC Davis Veterinary school professor allows his students to vote on the grade of a student on maternity leave. I say that a-hole deserves an […]
January 14, 2011 at 5:10 pm
Anna
I am baffled as to why this professor was so confused. I can’t imagine a University not having procedures or at least general guidelines as to what to do under such circumstances (and I am sure UC Davis has procedures in place). I teach at a University that adopts the latter. It is primarily up to the professor or instructor, although the administration encourages us to work with the student via email or after her return to school to make up the work missed.
On a related personal note: I was pregnant with both of my children while attending school (the first as an undergrad and the second in my final year of the Master’s program). I met with my professors one-on-one and negotiated the terms of my course grade, understanding that my absence, especially if prolonged, could result in a lower grade than I might otherwise have earned under normal circumstances.
I have to wonder why this particular student didn’t do this or something similar the moment she enrolled in the course. Of course, I don’t know what she did or did not do and I don’t blame her for his response. Nonetheless, the situation could have been averted. However, if she did indeed not prepare for the inevitable, I do blame her for contributing to the negative stereotypes about pregnant women and female students with children in college/education: they are irresponsible students incapable of being/becoming a mother and being a successful student at the same time.
January 14, 2011 at 5:28 pm
Liz
Here’s the response from Chancellor Katehi, who was really on the ball: http://www.dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.lasso?id=13182&fu=011411 .
January 15, 2011 at 10:48 am
Beth
@Anna–
From the scienceblogs site (first link in this story), there was no request for additional time…
//A friend showed me a class-wide email the student recently sent, stating that Dr. Feldman had not spoken with her before he asked the class presidents to send out the poll (I’m pretty sure this is really, really bad…). Another friend of mine reports that the professor asked the class to participate in the poll, while the relevant student was sitting in his class and that he basically ignored her when she pointed out that she was present and absences wouldn’t be an issue. //
So the prof did this under the assumption that she would be absent with a new baby, not because she actually was. Which makes it all the more problematic because now we see the stereotyping at work.
As a professor myself, I’m really appalled by this entire situation.
January 15, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Angus Johnston
That’s a great email from Katehi, Liz. The Inside Higher Ed summary/quotes don’t do it justice.
January 15, 2011 at 5:12 pm
David Parry
Yeah I agree with most of what you say here. I was just trying to point out two observations. 1. That I think it is plausible to imagine a scenario whereby a professor consults the entire class about grading policies, either at the beginning of class, or during class. 2. Ideally this would happen prior to any event occurring that would singularly effect any student. The problem as you point out is that multiple students were deciding about a singular student (all sorts of issues as you point out) rather than the group of students with the professor renegotiating the contract (which seems to me to be an ethical plausibility).
But as more information about this comes out it seems worse and worse. This is the reason schools have policies about this type of situation, and a professor shouldn’t be able to over ride the schools contract with the student.
January 15, 2011 at 10:24 pm
Bill D.
Gender discrimination in a class that has 85% women? David, there is gender discrimination sure enough… but it’s not what you are in hysterics about.
January 17, 2011 at 3:13 pm
Jazzi
Bill, I’m not entirely certain what your argument is based upon. Are you saying that a professor who teaches a class that is made up of 85% women cannot discriminate against those women? The makeup of the class has no impact upon the fact that the professor
1. Violated his student’s right to privacy
2. Pushed responsibilities that should have belonged to him alone as part of his job off onto his students
3. ASSUMED that his female student would be missing class due to her pregnancy, in spite of her insistence that she would not. That assumption is based off of stereotypes about pregnant women in general and pregnant students in particular, and acting upon it is clear gender discrimination.
January 19, 2011 at 11:20 am
Noah Roth
When I was in business school, almost all term projects were assigned in teams. In theory, this was designed to mimic business environments in which teamwork is an important skill.
Unlike business environments where there is a clear hierarchy, and a leader who can hold individual members accountable, in order to move the entire project toward successful completion, business school team projects are comprised of multiple peers.
In recognition of the fact that team members may not contribute equally, each member of the team is asked to evaluate his peers, and on that basis points may be DETRACTED from the grade of specific underperformers.
In theory this is supposed to hold all team members accountable, but because of the democratic nature of the evaluations, and the implementation of the evaluation to deduct but not add credit, conscientious students can find themselves disproportionately burdened, and/or harshly graded.
By way of example, let’s say 5 students work equitably on a group project that receives an A grade. Each student did 20% of the work, each student is awarded an A, and presumably, no one will be harmed by evaluations.
In a slightly more common example, it is possible that 4 people will each perform 25% of the work, and the four of them will poorly rate the fifth team member who did not participate. In this case, the project is assigned an A. The 4 participants are not rewarded for having to put in extra work to become eligible for the A. Given that 4 students all gave negative feedback about the 5th team-member, the professor can deduct points from his grade. While perhaps emotionally satisfactory, this action is solely punitive toward the underachiever, and does not reward the 4 participants for the excess work. Had they each only put in 20% of the work load, their maximum grade would have been an 80% despite performing their responsibilities to the team.
In an extreme example, it is possible for a group to be formed in which 4 students do 10% of the project, and one person does 40% of the project attempting to bridge the gap. The project receives a grade of 80%, and our worker bee cannot receive a better grade than that despite performing double the work, that yielded an “A” for a member of our first group. Punishing his peers won’t improve his grade, and may not even be credible if the 4 lazy teammates assert that work was allocated equitably.
It’s certainly not directly analogous, but I do believe that illustrates the point that grading systems are often subjective and pernicious. I see a professor attempting (feebly) to juggle the legitimate concerns of a student in a protected class (maternity leave) while simultaneously ensuring grade equity with the remainder of the class.
What I don’t see is an especially egregious attempt to be punitive to the student who was on leave, nor a major departure from other, commonly employed, peer evaluation grading systems.
January 19, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Angus Johnston
As I said earlier, Noah, peer evaluation can’t ethically be imposed on an ad hoc basis. They have to be built into the syllabus from the start — and they have to be constructed in such a way as to minimize the “subjective and pernicious” effects you note.
To say “all students will have 20% of their course grade determined by peer grading” is very different from saying “all of you will be graded by me, except the student who needs [or, even worse, who I’m assuming will need] special accommodation.”