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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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