A Word from the Faculty to Incoming College Freshman
The Classroom Does Not Operate like You Might Think It Does
And now, a word from the university faculty.
All you children of movie stars and billionaires, you kids with relatives who went to this university before you, and the so-called student-athletes expecting a break on grades, I have a little surprise for you. This message should also be heard by the helicopter parents flying around and trying to control both the admission process and what happens to their grown-up children in a classroom.
The faculty doesn’t give a fig about who you are or where you come. You can’t impress us with what you drive, what you are wearing, how well you can throw a ball, or where you go on spring break because you are just one in a sea of faces. We need to tell you that no matter how forcefully (or criminally) your parents harnessed money and privilege and drove you onto campus with a snowplow, it all stops the first day of classes. There is, in fact, only one thing on our minds as you enter our classrooms or watch us on zoom — that you engage in the material, learn something, and become an educated person. Because on university and college campuses, the buck stops not with the admissions procedure but with the faculty, and no one can save you from that, thank goodness.
From the faculty’s point of view, for the next four years, you will be on the same plane as everyone else. Your parents won’t be there to do the reading, take the exams, attend discussion sections, or write your papers. They might try to oversee your work on Zoom, but then we’d see their faces, wouldn’t we? Admittedly, you could get your parents to read your term papers, but good luck with that. In my experience as a professor, few parents (ok, none) can wax lyrical about the human fossil record, dark matter, or the millions of other seemingly esoteric things we teach at universities. And unless your parents have figured out a way to bribe every single professor across campus, I guarantee that you will sink or swim all by yourself.
Let me give you some telling examples of buck stopping from the 30 years I taught at Cornell University. One morning I walked into the department office and the secretary said there was a voice mail I needed to hear. She stood by, arms crossed, barely holding back her laughter. It was somebody’s father from the 120 students enrolled in my course on Human Evolution. He was complaining about his daughter’s grade on the first exam. As this Dad put it, “That Dr. Small has no idea how to grade on a bell curve and my daughter should get a higher grade.” Interestingly, he did not leave his name or phone number, nor did the chicken say who his daughter was. I thanked the secretary, walked into my class, and stood before a packed audience and told them about this call. I then went into a detailed explanation, using the blackboard a lot, about the mathematics involved in curving grades, which has absolutely nothing to do with a bell curve. I delivered this pre-lecture in a calm, informative voice and ended by telling students that their grades belonged to them, not their parents, and that grades were up to me, and me alone.
Another time I worked long and hard editing a badly written student honors thesis. She received cum laude which is the lowest possible level. Her father, an attorney, then called the department chair and the dean, saying he had read the thesis and his daughter deserved better. But it’s the job of a department chair and the administration to stand behind the faculty in these instances, and they did. The department chair and the dean made it clear that the level was awarded by me and that was that. Oddly, a few years later this girl asked me for a letter of recommendation to graduate school which I refused to write. How could I inflict her, and her father’s inflated sense of his daughter’s ability, on other professors and other graduate students?
I have also experienced an endless line of young people who wanted a better grade or begging that pass them even though they didn’t come to class and failed all the exams. But that stuff is just silly. Unbeknownst to these particular students, professors get to decide grades because, and it’s a fact, we know more about the subjects we teach than they do. We have letters after our names to prove it. Students have yelled at me, threatened me, or pleaded for a higher grade. But grades are earned, not bought, or awarded based on coercion or threat. To “fix” a grade because a student, or a parent, wants it fixed is unethical, and I’ve never heard of a faculty who has buckled under that kind of attempted influence. Professors share these stories and shake our heads in disbelief at the gall of students who think they get to decide their own grades.
No help from home, no private tutor, no pushy parent will be at your side at the next discussion session during which you are expected to speak up and contribute something insightful. Also, absolutely no one will be holding your hand during an exam. You’ll get the grade we give you, the grade you earned, even if you, or your parents, don’t like it.
And those of you freshman who genuinely worked hard to get into whatever college or university, and will be working even harder to stay in and learn something, good on ya. We faculty so admire you and think you are the greatest.
It is an honor and a joy to teach you.
