[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.

[zozbot234]

The best response to that is malicious compliance: make the changes, but in a way that's as reasonable as possible, and as obnoxious as possible to the people who have actually requested the change. Like, have the acknowledgment line on the syllabus be: "ᴅɪsᴄʟᴀɪᴍᴇʀ: ᴛʜɪs ᴄᴏᴜʀsᴇ ɪs ᴛᴀᴋɪɴɢ ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ ᴏɴ ᴛʀᴀᴅɪᴛɪᴏɴᴀʟ x-ᴛʀɪʙᴇ ʟᴀɴᴅ." or something like that. If the other side objects, you can stand your ground and point out that they are being unreasonable.

[hug]

While it's evident that some people are spiteful and ask for things they don't actually want just to be an inconvenience, I find it hard to believe that you actually think this is why every single indigenous person is asking for the acknowledgement. If you do believe that's the case, the only response I can make is that your belief runs counter to everything I've heard from indigenous people myself.

If we operate under the assumption that not every single person asking for a statement of acknowledgement is acting under bad faith, it's important to note that you haven't actually presented any reason about why it would be unreasonable to include.

Without a cogent argument against the inclusion of the statement, it's very sensible to point to the refusal to include the acknowledgement, and say "this person is refusing to do this simple kindness we have asked for, which makes him a bit of a jerk".

[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?

[hug]

To waste time on objecting to something that is trivial to do and then complaining about all the time that has been wasted by your own complaining is the height of cognitive dissonance.

[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