Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Abuzz

A poor student wronged by mean, horrible me has been inundating everybody with complaints. According to him, I gave him a failing grade (which caused him to be expelled from the university) just for (note the wording here) plagiarizing. The entire university is abuzz with worry. Oh, our poor baby! How could this have happened to him? Is it fair to expel a student just for plagiarizing?

Of course, what the badly used student forgot to mention is that:
  • he missed 11 out of 28 class meetings;
  • he didn't participate in class discussions a single time;
  • he got a grade of zero for every single written in-class assignment;
  • he didn't show up for two out of 4 mini-quizzes;
  • he didn't show up for two out of three exams;
  • he failed the final exam;
  • he failed to turn in one of the papers;
  • the only two papers he did turn in were copy-pasted from the Internet.
So how could he have possibly failed this course??

3 comments:

V said...

Was this "just plagiarizing" written in some official complaint? :) :)

I can sympathize with you very well. These days I have to endure periodic visits from students who all want a better grade. The last one claimed he needs to have high GPA to work on campus.
Me: You got a B+, I am pretty sure the threshold for working on campus is not that high.
Student: yes, but I got X Y and Z for other courses
Me: So why are you talking to me, and not to those other professors?

(Your blog is turning Harry Potterish... The verification word was "slytheno")

Clarissa said...

I missed the whole Harry Potter thing, so I have no idea what "slytheno" means. :-)

The moment I entered the university today, I was greeted by an administrator (who looked like he'd been waiting there just to ask me: "Is it true you failed X JUST for plagiarizing?" Then I got 2 e-mails to the same effect, with the same wording.) Sad.

eric said...

Where I did my undergrad, which was part of the Cal State system, took a zero-tolerance approach to plagiarism. I sure hope that's still the case.