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It seems likely that this essay was a trap. If so, it worked.
This is the assignment. It breaks the grade down into three sections.
10 points: Is there a clear link back to the assigned article? Can the reader assess whether the student has read the assigned article?
10 points: Does the paper provide a reaction/reflection/discussion of some aspect of the article, rather than a summary?
5 points: Are the main ideas and thoughts organized into a coherent discussion? Is the writing clear enough to follow without multiple re-readings?
This is the paper.
There are links back to the assigned article. They're pretty weak, but they're not zero. The paper is clearly NOT a summary and IS providing a reaction/reflection/discussion of some aspect of the article. The organization is poor but not non-existent. This article clearly does not deserve a zero by the rubric given -- I would say it deserves at least 12 points, full points for the second item and a minimum of one point for the other two. Thus, the zero was given as punishment and not fair grading. And the claim “Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs” is almost certainly a lie.
Just the opposite. This is a red-tribe student within the university attempting to obtain change from within.
Yea. Though more optimistically, I had an English social democrat-style professor in college who gave me a 100 on an essay defending propertarianism or "plumb-line" libertarianism. I cited Hoppe's argumentation ethics and he thought it was rather clever and novel. He maintained his views of course - and I've since shed most of the views in that paper - but my prof was able to appreciate a well-structured, at least internally valid argument. Mutual respect.
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Going by the rubric, she clearly deserved significantly more than a 0.
But it's a terrible rubric, and the goal shouldn't be applying shockingly low standards to all students fairly, but to apply reasonable academic standards fairly. If successful, this red-tribe push is far more likely to just further hollow out American universities as glorified daycare for post-teens than it is to get reasonable standards applied fairly.
Though, I can see an argument that universities are already doomed, so might as well accelerate the collapse so that something better can take their place.
Who the hell is pushing for higher standards and more rigor at universities? Literally who? Like that's not going to happen. And state schools in flyover aren't going to be leading the charge on that even if you get a genie out of a bottle.
Based on this thread, roughly two people on this entire site while two dozen think an attempt at doing that was grounds for dismissal. I”d liike to say I’m shocked but this isn’t the exactly the first or even the twentieth time people here have argued in simular vein.
It can't be the first time, or any time, because it just doesn't fit the criteria for being an instance of the general case you claim it fits into.
Where did anyone argue against increasing standards? Where did anyone even show that the discussed case was an attempt at increasing standards to begin with?
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I'm reminded of when I was in grade school, my mother demanded to speak with a teacher (known to dislike me) over an assignment I received a "C" on. Not because I'd been graded unfairly, but because it was a multi-part assignment, and I'd received "C"s for every individual part of it... including the part I hadn't done at all. My mom's fury wasn't over a low grade, but that the grade had nothing to do with the quality of the work I had or hadn't done, and was simply because the teacher jumped straight to marking it all "C" because she didn't like me (but presumably expected a "D" or a failure to bring pushback, given my grades from other teachers).
When faced with this, the teacher's immediate response (with a fellow teacher in the room!) was to ask, "well, what grade do you want me to give, then?" in the assumption that having arbitrarily given me a poor grade because she disliked me, my mother would be satisfied with an arbitrary good grade to make up for it--yet another mistake by that teacher.
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Sure, it's a terrible rubric. Most likely this class simply shouldn't exist. It's probably being used for political indoctrination.
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I respect your logic but have to disagree with the reading of the rubric. As someone who has completed plenty of similar reflection paper assignments during my time in college, the rubrics are boilerplate and vague but imply some pretty specific meanings. I want to hone in on the second point:
In my experience, the key word here is "some aspect." This usually implies a citation or reference to a specific point made by the article, usually in the form of a quoted argument. Really, this is just to prove you internalized some point from the paper. A reading check. As far as I can tell, Fulnecky didn't do this and instead discusses the concept of "gender" in its entirety, whereas the article was very narrow in its scope. Her essay wasn't a summary, but it was hardly specific, nor did it reference findings from the article. Should a citation have been specified in the rubric as a requirement? Sure. But, personally, it goes without saying. I have received a zero or two on reflection assignments for similarly bureaucratic concerns. Live and learn.
Ultimately we are both going to have to fill in the blanks as to what the "proper" interpretation of the rubric is. I suppose it comes down to who you trust to interpret the rubric properly - the instructor or Fulnecky. In this case, I have to give a little deference to the professor, because she created the rubric and I've experienced similar grading standards in the past. I suppose this sort of thing is what the University is interested in finding out.
Perhaps those are Fulnecky's motivations, though the greater media response has been more aggressive from what I've seen. I am suspicious that she took it to the media for such a small and inconsequential assignment. The more conventional action would be appealing your grade to the dean.
Then the student should get at least some of the first 10 points simply for demonstrating that she read at least some of the article. And even though the writing is pretty poor, it's not bad enough to warrant a 0 on the third item. Based on the rubric 0 is entirely unjustifiable.
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I agree with all of this. My problem is I just don't have any confidence that these kinds of standards are applied in a consistent manner, and I don't have any particular reason to trust this particular instructor any more than I trust the rest of University administration, which is not at all. I will never, ever, forget how much this story about a University essay crushed me: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/teen-accepted-stanford-after-writing-blacklivesmatter-100-times-application-n742586
So basically just Zhang Tiesheng, but for wokeness instead of communism?
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To (reluctantly) be fair, the teen in question had supposedly extremely high grades, had been to the White House dinner and was recognised by Barack Obama, and is clearly a social media star of some sort. Writing BlackLivesMatter over and over again on his application was cheap rhetoric but it was in response to a specific question on his application rather than an essay:
it's not literally all he had going for him.
Stanford didn't just accept some total rando because he wrote Black Live Matter.
The high grades are relevant, the rest of it is padding that should have been ignored (Obama let that kid with the clock/bomb visit the White House, getting to visit Obama in the White House was not a mark of distinction).
He wrote something stupid for an essay (did not fill in the part about "why does this matter to you?") and so should have been failed. If he was academically able to follow the instructions and produce a readable essay, as the high grades would argue, this is rubbish that is unacceptable as any kind of class work much less an application for a place to a selective university.
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He also happens to be the son of Shakil Ahmed, a rather big deal formerly of Morgan Stanley.
Daddy's deep pockets as possible future donor sealed the deal, then?
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It doesn't go without saying. At this point you're justifying not just a low score but a zero on a section of the grading based on a criterion which didn't appear, in which case why provide a rubric at all?
The criterion does appear, in the statement "some aspect." Fulnecky did not address a specific argument (aspect) that the article advances. This, in my experience, is a very common expectation. You are overestimating the degree to which grad student instructors and even full tenured profs are surgically specific in the way they construct rubrics - plenty goes unsaid. I will concede that my interpretation is not definitive, but the professors comments suggest that the grade was related to this lack of specific argumentation.
At this point you're insisting a vague term ('some aspect') means something very specific (there must be a citation to the specific part of the article being reacted to). I simply don't believe this.
I'm not saying it needs to be an APA-consistent academic citation. I just mean she needs to mention some particular detail from the article, which she does not. This interpretation seems most likely to me in light of my experiences with these assignments. They are basically reading checks, and the professor would not be mistaken for thinking Fulnecky didn't read the article at all. We may just not see eye-to-eye on how to read this thing. Cheers.
Doesn’t she mention the article assumes teasing creates gender roles but she thinks gender rules are created by God? Seems like she is addressing a specific point.
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