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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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