Graduate Students of Color, the group which launched the sit-in, said the act of correcting a black student was “micro-aggression.”
Val Rust, a professor of education and information, was the target of the protestors for what they feel was racial insensitivity. Describing themselves as “aggrieved minority students,” they claim that the professor was wrong to correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar in the papers of black students.
Did you get that? Trying to hold black students to a college level of proper writing skill is a hostile act of racism.
Correcting punctuation and allowing discourse are not acts of racism; they are what college professors are supposed to do. Al Sharpton has taught these students well. Take anything negative that happens to a black person, especially if it is their fault, blow it out of proportion and you have racism.
The grammar issue is apparently only a single occurrence: the agitated students say the professor’s corrections of the word ‘Indigenous’ [upper case] to ‘indigenous’ [lower case] in the paper are motivated by his desire to push a political/ideological agenda, rather than his desire to use correct grammar.
They are apparently also pissed that:
He touched a black student on the arm in an attempt to calm him down during a heated debate.
During an in-class discussion, he allowed a white student to present an argument that assumes the speaker is speaking from a position of oppression.
I keep seeing the phrase ‘students of color’ in reference to black, Hispanic, and latino individuals… is that the current PC phrase to use now?
The story seems legit. There is an article about the incident from the school newspaper.
Current and former students in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies expressed their support for professor emeritus Val Rust following a demonstration in one of his graduate classes last Thursday.
Student demonstrators alleged that there is a ?toxic? racial climate in the graduate school, including in Rust?s classroom. Organizers told the Daily Bruin last week that they decided to host the demonstration after a recent report examining racial discrimination among the university?s faculty stated that UCLA?s policies and procedures do not sufficiently address racially motivated instances of discrimination.
After Thursday?s sit-in, several current and former students said they did not believe there was a problem with racial discrimination in Rust?s class.
[UDPATED at 1 a.m.: In a letter sent to colleagues in the department after the sit-in, Rust said students in the demonstration described grammar and spelling corrections he made on their dissertation proposals as a form of “micro-aggression.”
Note the word “UPDATED” is typed as “UDPATED” in the article, I copied and pasted this exactly as written, this is not my fuck up.
Shit. My 100 level English professors would give goose eggs to people for miss spelling even one word. She stated very clearly that if you don’t use spell check you deserve to fail. Crappy spelling and grammar on a dissertation proposal is just sloppy and disrespectful.
I had a history professor back in college. He had what seemed to be an incredible hatred of the passive voice and straight out told the class that we couldn’t use said voice in our papers. Helpfully, he did give us a 6 or so page detailed write-up on how to avoid using it.
I also had a paper that should have been a B go down to a B- simply because I included two or three passive words in situations that seemed impossible to write in the active voice. He simply told me that I should have just rewritten the entire paragraph, or the essay itself if necessary, instead of struggling with fixing sentences.
This professor made me a much stronger writer, and I respect him for it.
Clearly these people do not respect their professor for challenging them to do “difficult” things…
judge incidents i have brought attention to without your personal feeling towards me. the veil will be taken away.
[/quote]
This time, it isn’t even you or my personal impression of you. It is simply that the story itself seems so… ridiculous on the surface that I have a hard time believing there isn’t more to this than “grammar correction = professor hates minorities.”
judge incidents i have brought attention to without your personal feeling towards me. the veil will be taken away.
[/quote]
This time, it isn’t even you or my personal impression of you. It is simply that the story itself seems so… ridiculous on the surface that I have a hard time believing there isn’t more to this than “grammar correction = professor hates minorities.”
[/quote]
If you knew how things truly worked in this city, you would not be surprised.
It’s from the same people who think iPads for the poor students are civil rights.
judge incidents i have brought attention to without your personal feeling towards me. the veil will be taken away.
[/quote]
This time, it isn’t even you or my personal impression of you. It is simply that the story itself seems so… ridiculous on the surface that I have a hard time believing there isn’t more to this than “grammar correction = professor hates minorities.”
[/quote]
If you knew how things truly worked in this city, you would not be surprised.
It’s from the same people who think iPads for the poor students are civil rights.[/quote]
Academia as a whole is pretty nuts. I’ve seen professors taken to the deans office about this same thing. Hell, I had to have a conference in the deans office because another student thought I was too opinionated and argumentative in a discussion based ethics class which the professor designed to create discussion of polarizing topics.
judge incidents i have brought attention to without your personal feeling towards me. the veil will be taken away.
[/quote]
This time, it isn’t even you or my personal impression of you. It is simply that the story itself seems so… ridiculous on the surface that I have a hard time believing there isn’t more to this than “grammar correction = professor hates minorities.”
[/quote]
If you knew how things truly worked in this city, you would not be surprised.
It’s from the same people who think iPads for the poor students are civil rights.[/quote]
That is more about those who profit from people being dependent upon technology, for everything, pushing that agenda. It’s why Bill Gates has involved himself so heavily in public education to the point that he creates and funds organizations that appear to be about social justice in education but are really working for him. They are not socialists or communists or even liberals, they are liberal elites.
judge incidents i have brought attention to without your personal feeling towards me. the veil will be taken away.
[/quote]
This time, it isn’t even you or my personal impression of you. It is simply that the story itself seems so… ridiculous on the surface that I have a hard time believing there isn’t more to this than “grammar correction = professor hates minorities.”
[/quote]
If you knew how things truly worked in this city, you would not be surprised.
It’s from the same people who think iPads for the poor students are civil rights.[/quote]
That is more about those who profit from people being dependent upon technology, for everything, pushing that agenda. It’s why Bill Gates has involved himself so heavily in public education to the point that he creates and funds organizations that appear to be about social justice in education but are really working for him. They are not socialists or communists or even liberals, they are liberal elites. [/quote]
I believe it, but you could use Google Chromebooks for half the cost of an Ipad and still accomplish the same thing.
Many of us questioned this very decision, and it was determined the school superintendent John Deasy has stock in Apple, and the wonder went away.
[quote]conservativedog wrote:
yeah it just can’t be that the undercurrent; racial divide that i have attempted to warn about is genuine.
[/quote]
25 grad students with their heads up their asses is not a “racial divide” and it doesn’t merit any warnings.
Search around and you’ll find stupid people of every color, religion, sex, and age getting together and doing stupid things in every corner of this country.
Now, if the professor were fired or something, then this would be a different story. But as it is, it’s just a bunch of fatuous clowns acting out.
