Anonymous Professor Has Been Summoned by the Capricious Grading Committee

I’ve been summoned to attend a hearing by the Capricious Grading Committee. I found the notice on the floor of the faculty mail room this morning. The graduate assistant who delivers faculty mail was probably the short little goldbrick with pink and purple hair. She could have used the step stool to get the notice into my cubby hole at the top, but she probably considered it demeaning and some sort of shortness shaming or discrimination against the vertically challenged. God only knows what goes through these slackers’ heads. It certainly isn’t Shakespeare’s sonnets.

I’m not quite sure where my mail box is. I knew where it was at one time, but I moved the name plates around, and mine fell off and was replaced with someone else’s.

But she could have put it in someone’s mail box instead of throwing it on the floor.

Capricious Grading Committee. Who the hell came up with that idea? There seems to be a committee for everything around here. I wonder how long this committee has been in existence. A student who has a bug up his/her/its/their nose can schedule a meeting with me on the calendar on my door. We can talk about it one-to-one. I’m always booked solid for gripe sessions, but most students forget about their meetings and don’t show up. It isn’t as if I refuse to make myself available. My door is open for the first two minutes of the scheduled time and then I close it’s when it’s apparent that a complainer is MIA.  

I make my rule about faculty consultations clear on the first day of class. If I get stood up, the student doesn’t get a second chance for another conference for the rest of the semester, and I dock the little crumb one letter grade. I’ve got better things to do than wait to for Amanda, Tyler, Ashley, or Ryan to come complain about the tests they failed because they preferred Netflix and Chill to good old fashioned study.

The faculty handbook mentions an appeal administrator as well as “a fact-finding meeting”.

Fact finding meeting? The test has the facts of the grade if the student even answered the test questions or submitted a paper. What else does a fact finding meeting include? A trip to the scene of the crime? Blood spatter analysis? A weapon? Motive and opportunity? Interviews with witnesses?

Farther down the page, the handbook mentions that the instructor is entitled to attend the meeting.

Well, la-dee-da. Wow. I’m invited to my own hanging. Isn’t that special? I am entitled to attend. What if I don’t feel entitled like most of these mental midgets think they are? Does that mean that attendance on my part is optional?

The faculty handbook goes on to say that the student and faculty member may be accompanied by a representative such as an attorney at the student's or faculty member’s own expense.  

Students have attorneys now? Good God! Aren’t helicopter parents enough? And why would I need a lawyer? Has litigation replaced professorial judgment? And what is the university’s general counsel for? For whom do those jackleg bottom feeders work anyway?

And this is where capriciousness comes in:

“…The student may submit in writing questions for the faculty member to answer in order to determine the method and process for arriving at the questioned grade ….”

My method is fool proof. I’ve been on the job long enough. I can look at a slacker and predict his grade. Depending upon the number and location of tattoos, and the number of eye, ear, nose, lip rings and nose studs and piercings, the paper or test is awarded a grade well below an A. Any hair color (or any combination thereof ) not found in nature further reduces the grade.

For papers, if the thesis statement resembles a title of a book of literary criticism I’ve read or if the title appears in the university library’s database, the paper is awarded a D or an F for plagiarism. Late papers are docked one half-grade for each fifteen minutes that it is late. I am generous in this area largely because not everyone lives on campus, and it is often impossible to find a parking space near the classroom buildings. The city bus runs every fifteen minutes and provides tremendous help for the student to get to class on time.

The grades of B and C require a little more consideration. If the typeface is Times New Roman, that automatically disqualifies the paper from receiving an A. That typeface is used on newspapers, not academic papers. Any typeface other than Garamond or Goudy also disqualifies the paper from receiving an A. If the student sailed through high school but failed to learn about typefaces, well, tough darts. That grade is going to suffer.

I take off points for dog-eared papers and papers with coffee cup rings on them. While I appreciate the possibility that the student stayed up late writing his paper, that coffee cup ring might also indicate that the student was hung over when he wrote the paper. The college experience helps to build character, and I do my best to build every one of my students’ characters. Nobody likes a drunk.

Of course, I do read the first few paragraphs of every paper to be sure of my assessment. Depending upon my suspicions, I run the first two paragraphs through Plagiarisma. Most of the time, I just run the first two sentences through Google. That usually tells me everything that I need to know. I don’t need to eat the whole egg to know that it’s rotten. My method frees my time for my most productive activity: a nap on my office couch.

One of my policies that shall forever remain sacrocanct is this: nobody receives an A on his paper or test. I am committed to stifling grade inflation. I’ve been tempted to hand out A’s to students who never show up for class or turn in a paper simply because they’ve saved me the anguish of having to deal with them, but I don’t. An F is reward enough. It proves to their underwriters (their parents) that they showed up for class.

What if I just don’t go to the oppressive University star-chamber meeting? Maybe there’s a default judgment similar to the one in small claims court. The accused loses the case if he doesn’t show up for the hearing. The lazy little plagiarizer with a pierced cranium will probably be awarded an A by a bunch of spineless administrative parasitic back scratchers who will do anything to keep that tuition money coming in. That’s no skin off my nose.

Damn. I just looked at the date on this notice. It’s dated the first week of January. That was LAST semester! Eight months have passed, but I haven’t heard from the English  Inquisition.. Where the hell has this notice been for eight months?

So that’s one dodged bullet. Maybe I should forget about attending more faculty meetings and quit even going to the faculty mail room. If missing the big, scary Capricious Grading Committee powwow has freed my time for more productive and deserving pursuits, skipping the gynocentric faculty meetings will spare me weekly headaches.

Thank God for my couch. I feel a much-deserved nap coming on.