[mbateman]

You would have demonstrated that moral authority is on the side of the student who was wronged. It doesn't matter whether or not they change their policy, what matters is that you went along with excluding a student for no reason.

EDIT: Sorry, this came off a bit too personally. I'm a teacher too and I got angry when I read this story. I'll just say more generically that it is easily possible (and justifiable) for a student to feel alienated after a situation like this, especially if they feel like their educator didn't stand up for them. Whether or not "standing up for them" involves canceling the entire trip is a contextual issue, and I really don't know if it would have been a good idea in this case.

[mnicole]

I don't get the teacher-blaming here.

Imagine you're a student in that class; you're stoked to see this talk, but one of your classmates can't get in. You feel terrible but you've been looking forward to this. If the teacher decides to "stick it to the man", you and 8 other of your classmates miss out and possibly become bitter towards the excluded one because of Yelp's security measures.

His having to direct her to the nearest transit might seem cold, but he was responsible for all of those students, and he was trying to offer them an experience they would grow from. I would have been incredibly bummed if I were her, but it wasn't anyone in her group's fault and they shouldn't have missed an opportunity to learn because the teacher decided he wanted to take some sort of personal, "Yeah, well I'll show you!" stand.

[morsch]

What kind of students are we talking about here? I assume they're not explaining how Pinterest is scaling to eighth-graders. If we're talking about adults here -- and apparently just 10 of them --, why not let them quickly huddle together and figure it out?

[mnicole]

Regardless of age, I'd assume they'd rather take notes [on her behalf] than not attend.

[slurgfest]

I think this is not so much teacher blaming as wishing to put additional pressure on Yelp for being terrible dickheads, via those teachers. If nobody ever stands up to bullies they just keep doing their thing.

[dasil003]

I understand why you disagree, but I don't think there's an obvious right answer here, it sucks either way. I don't think you're in a position to pass judgement unless you were actually there and knew the students personally. What if this would have made the rest of the class resent the one student? That would be a far more damaging outcome in my mind.