Ah, for the days of Dean Wormer. . . Students at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information accused a professor of racial discrimination after the professor corrected their grammar:
In a letter sent to colleagues in the department after the sit-in, Rust said students in the demonstration described grammar and spelling corrections he made on their dissertation proposals as a form of “micro-aggression.”
Ponder that:
- graduate school students
- in “education and information”
- who haven’t mastered grammar
- in their dissertation proposals
- staging a protest when, maybe for the first time in their lives, they come across a professor who’s doing them a favor
- because they feel that not letting them get away with their errors is a form of micro-aggressive racism.
Plweez!
The protestors are upset that Professor Rust also corrected their citations and their bibliographies.
As a Latina, I particularly resent the students’ premise that this constitutes racism. I fully understand that grammar for bilinguals sometimes is tricky. However, all education that is worth its name is rigorous by nature. Deal with it, kids.
(As an aside, spell-check and grammar-check are your friends.)
Indeed, graduate students in Education and Information ought to be embarrassed that their work is substandard. A dissertation is not a quiz: it’s a work that takes months to complete. A dissertation proposal by definition must be carefully drafted, and ought to be subject to scrutiny.
I also suggest that Prof. Rust contact FIRE.
But back to Dean Wormer,
(h/t Weasel Zippers)
UPDATE:
Linked by Pirates’s Cove and Da Tech Guy. Thank you!
What a bunch of ignorant whiners. Wait till they get called out for eM dash eN dash and hyphen abuse.