[dcole2929]

> Most of these suggestions seem to rely on the notion that undergraduates are delicate. While I agree that we must be careful to ensure that all students feel welcome and respected, we should be helping our students to become antifragile. So I will continue to use the BMI example, I will maintain high standards for grading, and I will continue to pursue cheating cases vigorously. I will continue to say “you guys” and to make occasional cultural references. In the case of pronouns, I have always made an effort to accommodate requests from transgender students, but I refuse to use words that are not part of the English language.

What really stands out to me is how he addressed the honestly pretty tame feedback he got on his class. A whole committee was put together and came back with recommendations on some pretty minor things he could do to better foster a sense of inclusivity and his response was nah I'd rather not. I'm not at all surprised at the result. Regardless of what his article said, the reaction to it, or his actual credentials as an instructor he showed the administration very clearly with his actions that he has literally no interest in trying to make the department an inclusive environment. And that's ultimately the entire point. They are trying to make CS as accessible as possible and this guy is fighting them tooth and nail at every step because what...?

I mean the last sentence is just a ridiculous take as a teacher. A) Yeet is now a word in the english dictionary. New words are created all the time and the definitions of existing ones change to match the context in which they are used in modern times. B) Making the pretty minimal effort, of referring to someone in the way in which they'd like to be addressed is literally such a low bar, that refusing to do so quite frankly makes you an asshole. C) He uses the word antifragile, which is not a universally recognized english word. It's a term coined by a professor in a book in 2012.

[thomaskcr]

I think he had the wrong reaction, I think he could have implemented some of the more reasonable suggestions easily, but some of that stuff is really nuts. "The addition of an indigenous land acknowledgement to the syllabus." I would have wtf'ed at too -- it's a CS class. If you mix in that stuff with reasonable suggestions like avoiding references that require cultural knowledge or just using different names in examples I can see how someone would just throw the whole thing out after getting exasperated with the whole process and some of the "best practices".

The suggestions included some that just seemed like "make your class easier", I can see how a diversity panel telling him how to grade his class would be annoying.

> A relaxation of grading on coding style.

> Allowing students to work together in a group for part of their grade instead of requiring them to complete all graded work individually.

> A reduction in the amount of effort expended pursuing cheating cases by 50 percent even though there has been no reduction in cheating cases.

There were some that he easily could have done, like just buying some seminar for his TAs and using a different problem:

> Training for TAs in inclusion and implicit bias.

> Review of all course materials for inclusiveness. For instance, of a lecture that involves calculating body mass index (BMI) using guidelines from the National Institutes of Health, the report noted that it “seems insensitive to present students with a program that would print out that some of them are ‘obese’ while others are ‘normal.’”

There's no reason not to make an effort to use more names in examples and even just a quick "I've always said you guys, I'm making an effort to say folks but old habits die hard" probably would have at least shown he cared enough to make people happy.

[zozbot234]

> "The addition of an indigenous land acknowledgement to the syllabus."

That's one nutty request amid a bunch of more-or-less-reasonable ones. (The requested reduction in pursuing cheating cases was just as nutty, TBH.) It tells you a lot about how politicized this whole thing is, but it's not like we didn't know that already. Overall, the article author seems a bit too emotionally involved himself, in a way that's pretty hard to make sense of as just caring about good CS 101 teaching.

[thomaskcr]

I do think he's being stubborn and some of the stuff (like keeping the BMI problem when there's so many problems that are exactly the same) I think he was doing just as a middle finger.

I was an RA years ago when this stuff was being incubated by residence life. A lot of it is really reasonable but I just remember everything being punctuated with insanity and it being so difficult to even get through to people pushing it.

We had to do one on one's with our residents, in our rooms (I forget the phrasing but it was "safe-space"esque) and some of the questions we had to ask were about sexuality. These were due within the first month, so imagine being a freshman, and your RA pulls you into your room for a scheduled meeting and then starts asking you questions about your sexuality. I was just like, maybe as an optional meeting after we actually know these people but this is so unprofessional and uncomfortable. I ended up just reading the questions I wasn't explicitly going to ask at an all hands meeting and saying "I'd love to discuss these things with you one on one but I am not going to force you to talk to me about them" and even that when I turned in my one on one reports with those questions blank for basically everyone was a huge issue (I can't remember what happened to me but I remember meeting with some director, my manager and the person above my manager).

So yeah, he explicitly said "I'm not even trying to compromise" - so we already know his mind space. Can't really defend that. But I at least know why he's so angry about the whole process because I know how those discussions go.

[Spooky23]

At my university, the cheating thing was introduced as an ethnic justice issue. Iirc, the claim was that some groups of people had to collaborate on things like exams (aka cheat) so that they could overcome of cultural inertia of whatever things they were worried about.

It came to a head in a 400-level class, and the professor handled it by making the midterm and final extra credit, and giving everyone an A who showed up to every class, deducting a letter grade per absence, unless the student demonstrated that they were observing some religious or cultural observance in the university’s list of approved things. (Which included everything from major holidays to observances of Norse religious events)

That professor was able to get away with that because she had tenure and followed the letter of the law with respect to grading. Whatever the content of the argument, lecturers are serfs in the academic hierarchy and have agency or freedom. They get abused and fired every few years anyway, so if you’re in that position STFU or get drummed out.

[blaser-waffle]

> ethnic justice issue. Iirc, the claim was that some groups of people had to collaborate on things like exams (aka cheat) so that they could overcome of cultural inertia of whatever things they were worried about

Why would I hire a group who only got through their qualifications by cheating? Sounds like it may lead to more discrimination than it solves...

[dcole2929]

The cheating one is actually not as unreasonable as you might think. I would love to see more context around that specific request. Is this a case where people of being accused of cheating because they did well when the professor didn't expect it (due to being from a specific background)? Are people of specific demographics being singled out for increased scrutiny.

Additionally, combined with the request for more group work it may be a case where people are working in groups on individual work which isn't in and of itself cheating, but may have been treated as such. At my university it was encouraged for people to work in groups on those type of assignments so that people could help each other and remove some of the burden from professors and ta's

[hug]

In Australia, indigenous land acknowledgements are commonplace, and I cannot think of a single instance where they have caused any inconvenience.

I see absolutely no reason why the addition of a sentence to the header of the syllabus would be onerous.

[zozbot234]

It's not about having them on the header of a syllabus, it's why have them on a CS 101 syllabus, of all things - and just about every other syllabus in the curriculum, apparently. Do people care that much about reading: "This course is taking place on traditional X!tribe land." or whatever? How does this make any sense?

[hug]

> Do people care that much about reading: "This course is taking place on traditional X!tribe land." or whatever?

Demonstrably: Yes, or they wouldn't be asking for it.

> How does this make any sense?

It costs you nothing, or so close to nothing that there's no effective difference, and a whole heap of people appreciate it. And, in this instance, it also allows you to keep your job. It's a net positive for all involved.

Do you have a particularly good argument for anyone not doing it? (Slippery slopes need not apply.)

[DuskStar]

> Demonstrably: Yes, or they wouldn't be asking for it.

Obviously, people never ask for things they don't actually care about.

IMO this is intended as something that is both unreasonable to include AND hard to object to on any grounds but reasonableness and practicality. "Don't you care about indigenous peoples, or are you some kind of racist?" And so it provides the ability to continue objecting to someone's behavior even if they make all the other requested changes.

[manigandham]

I guarantee far more people care about not wasting time with such trivial matters. Nothing is ever 0 cost. These demands are already causing chaos and decreasing the time spent on actual learning by paying students. Where's the accounting for that?

[apostacy]

If an indigenous land acknowledgement is so commonplace, then the institution should simply make the decision for its teachers and require its inclusion in their documents.

Being compelled to include something you may not actually agree with is onerous.

And it opens the door for other things to included as well. What if two different groups of student activists demand that you include contradictory statements?

I can understand why an instructor would opt to not include ANY political statements.

[Tomte]

> There's no reason not to make an effort to use more names in examples and even just a quick "I've always said you guys, I'm making an effort to say folks but old habits die hard" probably would have at least shown he cared enough to make people happy.

Do you really believe the student group and union would have been happy with this? I find that unbelievable. They would have decried the attempt to feed them some "easy" things and not follow through on the real issues.

Basically, as soon as they sent the letter with all those over-the-top descriptions of the prof's behaviour, they were in a corner and couldn't have accepted anything less than a dismissal.

[downerending]

I'd say that the "Alice and Bob" thing isn't as trivial as it seems. There is a long culture, especially in computer security, of using these example names. There's a connotation and context that's immediately available to those who know them. It's not unlike "foo" and "bar" in AI.

It might not be a huge effect, but not exposing students to this puts them at a subtle disadvantage to those who were. And the idea that these decisions should be dictated by some committee from elsewhere in the university is absurd.

[hinkley]

I agree tat he’s fighting them on some things that would cost him next to nothing. But people shut down when they get called out and this feels like some situations I’ve been in. You just pile on more stupid instead of saying maybe I fucked up.

I’d really like to see some more info from the Allen group about how study groups improve inclusivity rather than reducing it. That wasn’t my experience in school at all, and I feel like I’ve always been waiting for someone to call them out as favoring a certain type of student.

I don’t know that I trust the author to relate that info if it was in fact already provided. We have an unreliable narrator. It makes him look more sympathetic to summarize them in this terse form, and we don’t have the source material.

[hinkley]

Working in groups and reduced emphasis on anti cheating seem ripe for entitled white boys to leverage more than everyone else. Am I missing something, or are those at odds with the rest of the suggestions?

I suppose working while attending classes might make office hours difficult but study groups easier. What we can’t know is if he was summarizing for effect and he left out their rationale, or if these suggestions came to him this arbitrarily.

Mostly I get a vibe that he’s decided to die on this hill and he’s being stubborn and on some level enjoying the “persecution”. We all do things that feed our own narrative and don’t really provide any other payoff. My self sabotage has never been this public.

[dang]

Please keep flamebait and name-calling like "entitled white boys" off HN. Tossing Molotov cocktails into already-inflammatory discussion is not ok.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[hinkley]

Not sure why an entitled white boy calling out his peers is flamebait, but ok.

[dang]

By the standards of this site and (I'm pretty sure) the vast majority of its readers, dropping a phrase like that is obviously flamebait. If you want evidence for that, you needn't look further than the first reply to your post.

We've already had to ask you this, coincidentally even using a similar analogy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20580702. No more firebombs, please.

Since you bring it up, I'm guessing you felt that the "calling out your peers" aspect was a mitigating factor. The thing is, your comment didn't say anything about that, and readers have no way of knowing. Intent doesn't communicate itself, so the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

[hinkley]

Yeah, I’m not defending that other thread. You made the correct call.

I can appreciate the irony of discussing a guy who is being recalcitrant on the subject of how words or examples make others feel and then doing the same thing. Have a good Sunday.

[RandomInteger4]

> "entitled white boys"

Wow, racist much?

[dang]

Please don't respond to bad comment with an even worse one. That only damages the commons even further.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[Thorentis]

The feedback might have been tame, but was not at all reasonable.

Relaxing efforts to pursue cheating? Lowering grading standards? It is very clear that the committee looked at which demographics were not doing as well in his classes as they would like, and came up with some recommendations to change that.

We are seeing a trend in academia, where your class/race/ethnicity/social group membership should mean more in terms of what is owed to you, than your academic merit. Women being given bonus points to enter STEM degrees at University of Sydney is one such insane example.

I find it very disingenuous when people look at an article like this, think the points raised by the college/university aren't that bad, and then refuse to consider the underlying motives for the college to make these recommendations.

[Thriptic]

I agree that many of them are very reasonable and he is just being stubborn. For example, switching the BMI example to another example to avoid public shaming, using a variety of names and references so that everyone feels represented, and using provided pronouns costs him nothing and makes other people feel included. That being said, some of the others are less...value adding?

* A relaxation of grading on coding style - In the real world you will be expected to adhere to a prescribed coding style. Getting students used to this is not a bad thing. This is equivalent to docking points from students who refuse to learn how to use git.

* Allowing students to work together in a group for part of their grade instead of requiring them to complete all graded work individually. - This is a request to make the curriculum easier and does not appear to be related to inclusion.

* A reduction in the amount of effort expended pursuing cheating cases by 50 percent even though there has been no reduction in cheating cases. - This is a request to make the curriculum easier and does not appear to be related to inclusion.

* The addition of an indigenous land acknowledgement to the syllabus. - This is far outside the scope of a CS course.

* The use of gender-neutral names like Alex and Jun instead of Alice and Bob. - As long as you are using a variety of names, this seems redundant.

* An avoidance of references that depend on cultural knowledge of sports, pop culture, theater, literature, or games. - Using these is meant to be engaging and many students like it. As long as you don't need prior knowledge of history or knowledge of the reference to solve the problem then I don't see what the issue is.

* The replacement of phrases like “you guys” with “folks” or “y’all.” - "You guys" is universally understood to be gender neutral. Taking issue with this seems pedantic.

* A declaration of instructors’ pronouns and a request for students’ pronoun preferences. - Asking for students' pronouns is good practice and the professor should use them if provided. It is unreasonable to demand that professors provide theirs. It should be understood that if pronouns are not explicitly stated then individuals wish to go by their biological pronouns.

[DuskStar]

> * The use of gender-neutral names like Alex and Jun instead of Alice and Bob. - As long as you are using a variety of names, this seems redundant.

Alice and Bob are actually standard names for cryptography, though. They weren't names that this professor plucked out of thin air. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob

[raydev]

Was anyone arguing that the professor made them up?

[DuskStar]

They seem to be arguing that the names can be trivially changed without impacting further education or careers, and the names being used across classes and universities would say that that isn't (trivially) the case.

If he had pulled the names from a hat, it would be trivially the case.

[apostacy]

> * A declaration of instructors’ pronouns and a request for students’ pronoun preferences. - Asking for students' pronouns is good practice and the professor should use them if provided. It is unreasonable to demand that professors provide theirs. It should be understood that if pronouns are not explicitly stated then individuals wish to go by their biological pronouns.

I must be misunderstanding this. If I were teaching a class, am I really expected to solicit every single student for what their preferred pronouns are?

I'm fine with people's pronouns, but it is so rare, how does it make sense to ask everyone?

I actually know a trans person, and she told me that she hates how some people are constantly drawing attention to trans people.

[Thriptic]

I interpreted the request broadly as "there should be some opportunity for an individual to indicate atypical pronoun use", not that professors need to stand up and formally question poll the class on which pronouns they use.

[zozbot234]

> Allowing students to work together in a group for part of their grade instead of requiring them to complete all graded work individually. This is a request to make the curriculum easier and does not appear to be related to inclusion.

Out of all the suggestions that were made, this is the one that's perhaps most relevant to inclusion and getting more women to code, actually. It's well-known that women are on average more social than men, more open to working with people than things, and less approving of solitary activities like being a traditional lone "rockstar coder".

[phkahler]

>> It's well-known that women are on average more social than men, more open to working with people than things, and less approving of solitary activities like being a traditional lone "rockstar coder".

And yet if this professor used a statement like that as an explanation for why fewer women code than men, he would suffer the consequences, name calling, and firing.

[wayoutthere]

Furthermore, the lone "rockstar coder" is an antipattern. Very little development is done in a vacuum, and the best developers I know -- male or female -- are the ones who can bring other people along with them in technical discussions.

[seanmcdirmid]

It isn’t exactly an anti pattern, just rare; eg with Notch and Minecraft. Lone coders can create great masterpieces, but it is a very different kind of artifact than what a group could produce. Don’t count loners out from being productive members of society in any field.

Of course, most work requires a lot more collaboration, and CS departments could do more to help train up those skills.

[dmatech]

To be fair, pronouns in English are considered a "closed class", while adjectives (like "antifragile") are considered an "open class". This has been true for centuries.

[alexandercrohde]

That's all totally reasonable. However independent of that-

One thing he said that sounded completely outrageous though was that the inclusivity committee asked "A reduction in the amount of effort expended pursuing cheating cases by 50 percent even though there has been no reduction in cheating cases."

That's crossing a huge line in my opinion.

[josteink]

It's about demographics. Whatever demographic is being caught cheating is probably also a "minority" demographic not exceeding in academia, making the school "look bad" for "not being inclusive enough".

So for the school to be "more inclusive", more of that demographic needs to pass. And then we just have to stop catching them while cheating.

This is typically the error where people force-optimize for the numbers asked alone, instead of thinking about what they can do to make those metrics appear naturally.

And as usual the results are just bonkers.

[tomlong]

I lost any and all sympathy I had when I got to the quoted section.. he seems very fragile himself, and not very good at handling some pretty reasonable criticism.. antifragile indeed.

[wayoutthere]

In my experience, people complaining about fragility are usually projecting.

[munmaek]

It’s not inclusive to force people to stop saying “you guys”, which is a midwestern thing. Different areas have a different words for the plural you, such as “you all” or “y’all” or “all y’all”. I grew up in Chicago and everyone said “you guys”, regardless of the group’s genders. I think it’s absurd the school would go after him for that.

Also, for English, new verbs and nouns are constantly made. Not pronouns. [0]

Also, the cheating thing is ridiculous, full stop. I’d have a hard time dealing with folks like that as well.

[0]: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-closed-class-words-1689856