How many people are actually going to attend the Grade Brown Bag Tuesday?
I am not sure if listening to the party line, again, would be worthwhile. And what suggestions are there other then holding the Professors to the required date?
UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments, don't forget it is a "Brown Bag" Meeting at 3:00 PM in Room 307.
UPDATE 2: Anyone actually attend (I was unavailable for a 3:00 meeting on a Tuesday)? Reports? Observations?
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19 comments:
I’m not going--what’s the point. (The whole place will probably be staked out--COINTELPRO-style--with cameras to identify the dissenters and put them on some administration shit list).
What’s with bureaucratic mindset to talk issues to death rather than solving them? The whole fact that we’re having this “brownbag” is a bad sign; it implies that the appropriateness of the late grades is up for discussion, and that the problem is something we need to solve, Kumbaya-style, hand-in-hand with the administration . . . It’s ridiculous--there is clearly a problem here, and it is clearly the province of administrators to solve this problem (especially if they’ve failed to anticipate the problem and pre-empt from the beginning). I don’t want a “brownbag” and discussion, I want a competent administrator to solve this problem, and announce its resolution to the school . . .
"It will Not Happen Again On Our Watch!" or something to that effect would be nice to hear from the Deans.
I say we go to the meeting, just two months after it was scheduled (and then blame our tardiness on the snow storm this weekend).
Boy JQET, that REALLY makes me want to attend now! Comparing the potential effectiveness of the meeting with curing cancer...
Well, the analogy to cancer is particularly apt. ;-)
Will there be pizza? Or will it truly be a "brown-bag"? Like all lunch-related law school activities, the provision of food is a key consideration.
Look at the e-mail again--it's at 3:00. I don't know why you'd call something a "brownbag" when it's not even at lunch time.
If you do it at 3:00 and do not serve food then the administration is basically saying, please, don't show up, don't make us explain the debacle.
Thanks Anon, I must say I read brown bag and assumed, you know, lunch time.
No chance I'll go (even if there is pizza).
So did anyone go? What happened -- for those of us that had class...
I heard that Dayna Matthew, Cindy Gibbons and Marni Adams were the only ones there.
Looks like the student interest in the topic wasn't quite as overwhelming as people on this blog thought it was...
That doesn't mean there wasn't (and isn't) widespread student interest in the issue of grades . . . on the contrary, there just isn't much interest in listening to administration prevarication on the subject, especially when the administration has proven itself incapable of, or unwilling to, actually do anything.
I have no doubt that the administration will use the non-attendance at the event to conclude that no one really cares about grades (except a few cooks on the blog), and that everything is fine . . . heads in the sand and plausible deniability--the mantras of CU Law accountability.
Actually, it kinda' does mean that. If nothing else, it means that some students care enough about the issue to spend 5 minutes writing a complaint about late grades on the blog, but yet they aren't willing to make the effort to come to school (or walk upstairs if they're at school) to try to explain why it's such a big deal and to try and fix it.
It leads me to believe that this blog over-hyped the issue and that students forgot about it in as much time as it took the issue to balloon into a "big deal" on the blog.
With all due respect, you seem to not be a regular reader of this blog, or have any idea how many people expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the late grades over the course of the past two months . . . I suggest you read the old posts to get an idea of how many people were upset, and the reasons why . . .
If we’re judging student interest in the topic based on how many people attend a meeting called with no real goal in mind, then I think we’re using bad metrics. As many of us expressed on this blog (and even in this post), we were not interested in hearing the administration’s excuses for the late grades, or even explaining our dissatisfaction with the late grades face-to-face with the administration. It’s all right here on the blog, and we know the administration reads this blog, as recent posts illustrate . . .
All we want is a competent administration to solve this problem. We don’t care how. We don’t want to discuss our feelings. We don’t want to plead. It is not unreasonable for students to expect grades from their professors in a timely fashion, or at least in time to compete with students from other schools on spring job searches, or in clerkship applications.
I suspect that you are a professor or administrator, and did not receive the long email from Beckett after his own fruitless meeting with Dean Matthew on this topic. Our SBA representative, after reading this blog and getting the student pulse, tried to discuss late grades with Dean Matthew when the issue was still fresh, and was basically shut down; he got the company line, which was a bunch of unconvincing excuses about how busy professors were with tenure review and other topics over winter vacation. (Incidentally, the prevarication continued—one of the last classes to receive grades was held up due to “extenuating personal circumstances” of a professor who, nonetheless, managed to meet every one of his weekly deadlines for his newspaper column . . .). Whether or not the administration’s excuses are valid is irrelevant; the administration is responsible for getting grades to students in a timely fashion, and should find a way to make that happen. (At a minimum, the administration should enforce its own standards of fining professors who are late in returning grades, but even this apparently doesn’t happen. If the administration won’t enforce its own rules, how can we expect it to make meaninful changes?)
It’s a shame that the administration is apparently going to conclude that there is no real student interest in this subject, simply because it was able to wear down our expectations by blowing off our SBA representative, making no meaningful moves toward resolving the grades issue, and then scheduling a meeting in late February with no real purpose. (I repeat: we did not attend because there was no point in attending; we don’t care about your excuses, and we don’t know how to solve this problem . . . that’s the job of the administrators, and the reason they are paid.)
Finally, at a VERY minimum, there is no question that: (1) grades were (very) late; and (2) some people were (rightly or wrongly) very upset with this situation.
We never heard a single word of apology from the administration. Not once. No acceptance of any accountability. No hint that the administration even acknowledged there was a problem. Even now, we have never heard anything from anybody in a position of authority acknowledging that getting grades 5 weeks late is problematic.
Do us the honor of at least lying to us. Pretend that you’re on our side. Pretend that you care. Tell us that you are going to look into the problem, that you acknowledge our concerns . . .
Instead, the email we received from Beckett after his meeting with Dean Matthew went out of its way to specify that the administration’s excuses were not intended as an apology . . .
There is a deep distrust between the students and the administration, and this type of communication doesn’t help.
Why would you assume that someone that has a different opinion as you is a professor? And who cares if it is a professor -- they have a right to their opinion.
And by the way -- in the interests of full disclosure this comment is being made by a 2L.
I don’t care if someone has a different opinion than me, and professorial opinions are just as valid as anyone else’s . . . I’m just saying that it’s likely the previous poster was a professor given some of the hints—misspelling of the name “Marnie,” referring to “the students” in the third person, being apparently unaware of previous student attempts to resolve late grades through “official” channels, etc. Maybe the poster was or wasn’t a professor; it doesn’t matter. (If it was, however, I wanted to provide some background so that the “student” perspective on grades was understood, and not dismissed entirely because none of us went to the brownbag on Tuesday.)
The Ballad of Western Disposal
One fine morning, the Citizens of Boulder awoke to find that their trash hadn’t been removed. Flummoxed but not overly concerned, the Citizens waited, assuming that some unforeseen circumstance had prevented the trash pickup that morning. It had snowed over the weekend, after all, and maybe Western was just waiting for the snow to melt before resuming its normal trash pickup.
The next week, however, the snow had melted, and Western was still nowhere to be seen. Trash was piling up. Giving Western the benefit of the doubt, the Citizens of Boulder waited again, assuming that something very serious must have occurred, and that Western executives were likely doing everything in their power to correct the problem.
After a third week of nice weather came and went, with no pickup, and no word from Western, the Citizens decided to take action. The Citizens appointed a Representative to meet with Western, and to explain how the trash piles were leaving a bad impression on guests, and were blighting the neighborhoods.
Representative contacted Western and was afforded a meeting. After describing the Citizens’ concern regarding trash pickup, and explaining how the trash was blighting the neighborhoods, Representative asked Western for an explanation. Western explained that the past few weeks had been very busy, as some executives had been switching positions, and others moving into new offices. In addition, some of the drivers had been busy with contract work, driving routes for companies that paid more, or that were considered more prestigious. Finally, some drivers had simply grown tired of picking up trash, and had taken time off, knowing that Western did not enforce its rules regarding prompt completion of routes.
Dazed by this strange explanation, Representative met with Citizens, and explained Western’s position. Some Citizens grew outraged, while others grew resigned. The more inopportune amongst the Citizens wrote letters to the paper, complaining that the trash was interfering with their personal relationships, scaring away friends, and leaving a bad impression on visitors. They called for Western to take action, and pointed out that the primary responsibility of a trash removal company is to remove trash. Others grew resigned, knowing that Western was a monopoly, and that Western could ignore the Citizens’ pleas with impunity. Western was clearly aware of the letters, because it responded to other articles in the paper, particularly those which questioned the motivation of its top executives.
After two more weeks of letters, and no response from Western, the Citizens realized that they were powerless to influence the company. They gave up on trying to convince Western to do its job of a sense of duty, and accepted that self-regulation and reflexive respect for the customer were hopeless ideals in era of modern trash disposal. Despondent, but with a clearer sense of Western’s power, the Citizens stopped writing letters, and gave up hope.
A few days later, Western decided to pick up the trash. The blight was lifted, and a sense of normalcy returned to the Citizens.
After the Citizens settled back into their daily lives, Western sent a letter offering to discuss the five-week delay, but only if the Citizens came to Western in person. Distrustful of Western, and acutely aware of their reliance on the company for basic sanitation needs, the Citizens deliberated amongst themselves. They decided not to attend. No one wanted to be dropped as a customer, and all relied on Western for their basic sanitation. No one could fathom why the meeting was being called, since Western clearly knew of the Citizens’ position, and held the sole power to remedy the problem through future preventative measures. Believing that the meeting was pointless (or, at best, was called to convince the State that Western was “responding” to customer concerns) the Citizens stayed away.
The next day, Western published a letter declaring that nonattendance at the meeting proved that the Citizens did not care about trash pickup.
Beautiful. The Ballad of Western Disposal needs to be reprinted in its own post!
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