A Philosopher King

http://arcstudents.com is the site of the Associated Student Body of American River College. I redesigned our site this summer and have been blogging on it to encourage discussions relevant to the student body.

My most recent blog was entitled “Student as N!gger”  and talked about how students were treated as “less than”, talked down to and disrespected.

Shaine Johnson, the ASB’s 21 year old President called me to ask why the word N!gger was on “his site” and to tell me to remove it. When I asked him what would be a better word to use in it’s place he came up short and finally told me to use “Stupid” which I did.

He called again later asking me to explain why I had posted the blog. I found out at that point that he had not read the post.

Later that afternoon I got an email from Jared Abdirkin the ASB’s staff advisor asking me to remove the post, which I agreed to do.

I was unable to keep my word as the the aforementioned blog post had been deleted. Not just removed from the front page but erased from the Database.

In fact all of my blog posts had been erased including such inflammatory post as “Summer is the time to Volunteer”.

All of this is upsetting and puts me in an embarrassing position. First off, it hadn’t occurred to me to make copies of my posts and secondly, after being contacted by President Johnson, I had contacted Dr Cornel West at Princeton University to ask for his opinion on my “Student as N!gger” comments. I had included only the Link to the post and now it is gone.

This is both a Crime and a Tort.

In Equity it is the Tort of Conversion which has a Strict Liability meaning that even if the person(s) who did it didn’t know that that those were the only copies is still liable and responsible to make me whole.

In Criminal Law it is the crime of Theft.

I’m sure one could argue that my Constitutional right to freedom of expression had been abridged.

Mr Abdirkin asked me to hold off on working or posting on the site until we can have a meeting. I said OK and don’t mind putting of the blog posts but I hate to put off the work on the site. The semester will be starting soon and available time will be short.

And many a mile before I rest.

In my Online Accounting 107 class we were assigned a group project. Professor Diamond told us that if anyone in our group plagiarized their part that the entire group would get 0 on the assignment (12% of the grade). There were a number of people who complained in our online discussion (more participation than for anything else on the discussion boards).

I sent the following private email to Professor Diamond

Rob,

I’m afraid you are responsible for the negative comments about the group report by the way you framed the Plagiarism position.

You already made it clear at the beginning of the course what your position was.

By directing people to the idea that one member of the group could cause the entire group to fail you asked people to think these negative thoughts.

A positive statement of encouragement and trust would have gone a long way toward helping your students to do their best work instead of being focused on the worst outcome.

You are the leader. You set the tone at the top. I know you can and will do better.

Yours Truly

Jeff Bellamy

He responded with this

Jeff,

Your e-mail was diverted to my spam box since it did not have the subject line as requested in the course syllabus.

Without being clear of my expectations, some students will plagiarize.  I’m sure you would not have wanted your grade to be reduced to zero because another student in your group did not clearly understand the consequences of plagiarism.

It may appropriate for you to give a reprimand such as this to faculty in the future when you are a dean, but not today.  And you may one day be able to give advice, hopefully with a more collegial tone, when you have greater teaching experience than other faculty. You may one day become a peer to other professionals or possibly be in a position of authority, at which time it might be appropriate to use first names.  Given our current faculty-student relationship, it would be appropriate to offer suggestions in a less reprimanding tone and address me as Professor Diamond.

Rob Diamond

To which I responded

You will note that I always address you as Professor Diamond in class forums. If you don’t want me to address you by your first name ever, then please extend me the same courtesy.

It really is not necessary to have an academic position to understand how an authority figure in a group sets the tone. The fact that you seemed to have missed that, and continue to miss it, speaks volumes.

Yours Truly

He Whose Name Must Never Be Spoken

To which he replied

Jeff,

Your suggestions are invited.  Your tone and chastisement are not and must stop.   If not, I will invoke campus policy to suspend you from the class.

Professor Diamond

¿ʞuıɥʇ noʎ op ʇɐɥʍ ˙ʎɐʍ ǝɥʇ uı sʇǝb ʎןuo ǝʇɐɹʇuǝɔuoɔ oʇ buıɹʇ ʎɯ puɐ ʞɹoʍ ʇɐ ǝɹɐ puıɯ ʎɯ ɟo sʇɹɐd snoıɔsuoɔqns ɟı sɐ s,ʇı ˙sı ʇı ɹǝısɐǝ ǝɥʇ ʎɐd ı uoıʇuǝʇʇɐ ssǝן ǝɥʇ ʇɐɥʇ puıɟ ı ˙buıʇsǝɹǝʇuı ʎɹǝʌ sı buıpɐǝɹ uʍop ǝpısdn ˙uʍop ǝpısdn sǝuızɐbɐɯ pɐǝɹ ı sǝɯıʇǝɯos puɐ nʞopns op ‘ןooɥɔs oʇ ob ı ˙ǝsıɔɹǝxǝ ɟo ʇoן ɐ sʇǝb uıɐɹq ʎɯ ǝɹns ǝʞɐɯ oʇ ʎɹʇ ı

I just attended an online presentation using Elluminate, a Java based Whiteboard platform.It featured Susan Patrick, President and CEO of iNACOL, the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. The topic was”A Perspective on the Future of eLearning Worldwide”.

It was put on by Future of Education and was hosted by Mike Lawrence, the Executive Director of CUE (Computer Using Educators). It had 100 participants.

I enjoyed Community so much that I started taking classes at ARC to become an Accountant. This led to me going to an Accounting Club meeting (I really didn’t have to GO, I just stayed in my seat and when my Intermediate Accounting class end the meeting began) where I volunteered to be the Inter-Club Council Representative.

Being the kind of person that I am, I set up a networking site for the Accounting Club. Then I set one up for the Inter-Club Council. Then I started looking around at other school sites to see which might be useful links.

This has been kind of scary. I went to the school newspaper site and found three quarters of their pages empty including Contact Us and Advertise I have since spoken with the paper an now understand that they are going through an admittedly slow change over of publishing software. The main ARC site isn’t much better. It’s as if there were some sort of cataclysm around Thanksgiving 2009 that the school has yet to recovered from.