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This reads a lot like the defense of that Christian college student refuting pro-trans arguments. Here on the Motte there was lots of "Her arguments are bad but a score of zero? The teacher is treating her differently, more harshly."
People here posted the actual grading rubric and went through how this wasn't a zero given a reasonable interpretation of the grading guide.
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There's a pretty big difference between actual novel research and some random busywork essay task for undergraduates. Especially since the former shouldn't just be composed to hit a KPI whilst the latter explicitly is.
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Ugh, fine, I didn't read the essay at the time but I did now.
The question is whether the essay, which was bad, was bad enough to earn a 0/25 rather than a higher-but-still-low score like, I dunno, 2/25 or 5/25. "The soft sciences are sufficiently corrupted by ideology that their politically-relevant outputs should asymptote to a low level of Bayesian evidence" is a highly-plausible and highly-relevant proposition to discussing any research article that's come out of them, and she did hint at it; that's better than literally nothing. Grading does need to discriminate between different degrees of badness, after all, and in this specific case we have proof that the instructor was marking down due to taking personal offence at the positions taken:
(AP, emphasis mine)
I will note that, regardless of your opinion of the essay's quality, "writing a bad essay" is not a moral failure in the way that, say, plagiarism would be (even though plagiarism is not actually a crime)... or in the way that scientific fraud is. I'm not actually sure whether this is literally fraud in the legal sense; I don't know whether "you agree to not tamper with your data" was part of the contract to receive a research grant ("you agree to actually do the study" presumably is, but the study does appear to have been performed in all these cases). Nonetheless, it seems obvious to me that a university that allows its scientists to tamper with data would stop getting government grants in a hurry (because, well, the actual state interest in issuing research grants is to uncover scientific truths, not to produce papers full of literal lies; there are of course private funders who want to buy propaganda, but the state shouldn't be doing that) and thus it is reasonable for a university (at least, one that intends to continue performing government-funded research) to fire scientists that have repeatedly performed such tampering (and thus ensure that they don't do more of it).
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There's not much point in trying to (retroactively) change a grading rubric and the paper's score so that the actual outcome, your preferred outcome, and the procedurally-fair outcome all match. As a result, practically nobody had that broad of a conversation.
There is a point to setting scientific research standards and Harvard's employees, so that the actual/preferred/fair outcomes all match (in the future, at least).
Also, getting a zero for a substandard paper is wrong, and getting fired for academic fraud is right. We should be keeping different halves of the double standards from those examples.
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I noticed the same and have absolutely no sympathy for that viewpoint, to the extent that I think anyone advocating for it is some combination of idiot and actively malicious.
You don't believe that random busywork essay tasks for undergrads are marked via rubric?
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"Heh, I compare two incidents that have superficially similar argumentations around one another and so once again I accuse the chuds of hypocrisy, gotcha!"
Go directly to Reddit. Do not pass go, do not collect 200$. There is a world apart between making rhetorically weak arguments and fabricating evidence whole cloth. You know this. But here you are, saying something incredibly foolish, to attempt to reignite a past argument that you had failed to persuade in.
You are shameless, that much I know, but you can try to at least not be stupid at the same time. Now, having bitten into this bait, I will spit it out and go on my way.
You've been warned and banned many times for personal attacks. For someone using "reddit" as an epithet, you are acting like a redditor.
One week ban.
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There is also a world apart between a zero on a single assignment which is 10% of a single course grade and firing a tenured academic in disgrace. Both would be the appropriate punishments in a sane academia for the respective crimes, but are enforced far too rarely.
In both cases, the argument being made is of the form "A fundamentally righteous but rarely-enforced rule was enforced against an obviously-guilty member of a protected group - and discrimination by selective enforcement is worse than the underlying crime" (and the scissor is "Given the history of malign discrimination and current underrepresentation, should conservatives in academia be a protected group?"). The structure is symmetric, even if the relative severity is not.
This is the similarity you're failing to show between the cases. As per the other thread the grading criteria for the assignment do not warrant a 0. Yes, it's a bad essay, but the criteria provided by the professor explicitly allows bad essays. Please show how there were similar rules that actually allow for the penalized conduct in this case.
The essay deserved an F (that is 0 at some schools including this one and, bizarrely, 50 at others). Some of us think that grading rubrics giving F-quality work D and C grades in order to avoid giving earned Fs to protected groups are precisely what's gone wrong with higher education. When the F student isn't politically sympathetic, most Motteposters do.
The rule being selectively enforced here is "Undergraduates should be able to do undergraduate-level work". It isn't the specific rubric.
Your argument about this paper deserving an F is sufficient in a vacuum. However, this did not occur in a vacuum. It was one of many papers, and all prior papers written by this person were graded very generously. Once that pattern is established, a sudden zero requires justification beyond “this paper was bad.” There could've been some plausible deniability had the trans TA given a high F and kept the criticism solely about the paper not adhering to the rubric. The trans TA didn't do that. They gave the paper the lowest grade possible, then wrote a lengthy redditor debate style response directly to Fulnecky denying her appeal, which included how they were offended. That diminishes plausible deniability quite substantially.
Even if that essay did deserve an F per the rubric, then what should be done with all other generously graded essays in that course under said rubric? Fulnecky received full credit on all prior essays in that series of assignments. I'd be willing to bet that her writing quality on this controversial paper was not exceptionally worse than her other papers, or even other papers written by other students in that class. The university's own internal review seems to support that, and the lack of consistency is the most damning bit of evidence that the TA cannot account for.
Fundamentally, I don't care about Fulnecky's cause as much as I do about the culture establishing a counter balance to progressive overreach. This TA receiving a punishment of this severity is worth it in that regard. Not because their crime was severe, but because similar crimes of this nature occur everyday on nearly every campus in the country. I do not want progressive thumbs tipping the scales without fear of repercussion any longer.
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What's bizarre about it? <=50% points is a failing grade in every European country I've been in.
Not according to the grading criteria for the assignment. And if yes, just barely.
What's the evidence that this rule even exists? I can probably pull out a specific rule for the school that prohibits academic fraud, if you admit there isn't one here, you're admitting the cases aren't analogous.
Most motteposters are in favor of high standards. Failing a particular student a teacher doesn't like, but otherwise keeping the low standards isn't particularly popular.
I don't think it's crazy to think that there is a very meaningful distinction between "your rules" and "your rules, applied fairly". Fairness is probably the most important claimed value of both sides of the culture war anyway, there is just disagreement on its interpretation.
I can also entertain the separate thought that standards should be more rigorous, but my elitist sensibilities there there would probably nix a decent chunk of the psychology department's courses as a whole: reading between the likes here suggests to me that "lifespan development" was broadly seen as an easy class and I'd bet half the essays are worse but scored well still.
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No, people on the Motte said "Her arguments are bad, but according to the published grading rubric there's no way it deserved a zero"
Yea? Ok.
Is this an argument? A rebuttal? Or just a low-effort grunt?
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Do you not see any difference between that argument and your strawman of it?
It's not what I remember the argument being here. I recall people here saying an equally shitty form of argument coming to pro-trans conclusions wouldn't have gotten a zero. In any case, in both cases the goal posts are moved away or toward the solidity or veracity of the argument made and away or toward "but given procedural conditions and norms that surround the argument-making, she's being singled out."
I believe her paper was singled out because of its content.
Based on the information above, it was already reasonable to assume that this paper was graded with extra scrutiny because of the topic and the grader's identity.
Then the university reviewed case and decided the TAs grading was arbitrary. The provost agreed with this conclusion.
What do you disagree with here?
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Likewise if the same thing had happened 5 years ago where a mostly off-topic pro-trans argument was submitted to a conservative TA and given a 0, that TA would have been loaded into a cannon and shot into the sun.
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Cool, I can't wait to make you defend an argument you never made, because that's how I "remembered" it.
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