pittsburghgirl
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- Joined
- Oct 30, 2005
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What matters here is how unprofessional and unnecessary it is to expose someone charged with grading papers to the complaints of 150 grad students. It was up to the professor to help any TA he/she/they supervise to grade papers according to the professor's standards. I'm not defending BK as a grader or a TA. I'm saying that the full-time professor has a responsibility to help and mentor a first-year Ph.D. student in terms of teaching or grading. I've supervised TAs. They are often lost during the first semester, whether they are teaching classes on their own or assisting someone with a large class. I've done both. None of it is easy at first.What's described in the link doesn't sound that neutral.
It also seems weird to me to drag a criminology TA rather than a law student into that and expect them to debate it like a lawyer. It would be great prep for a law student, for sure. But BK was not a law student. Maybe he arranged that with BK and BK was totally fine with it, but what is being described in that article doesn't seem like a neutral, no-feelings-hurt exercise in debate to me. It reads more like a rather pointed message at an overbearing TA, one that was intended to put him in his place and make a rather lasting impression when it comes to grades. MOO