Professor offers extra help to ‘Students of Color Only’

College Insurrection ^ | 9/17/2013

[markomalley]

How does a person with the education of a college professor think this is an appropriate message for students?

Collen Flaherty of Inside Higher Ed has the story.

‘Students of Color Only’

A Texas Christian University professor reached out in an e-mail to a group of students he deemed to be “of color” to help them succeed in his class. But the move backfired with at least one student, who was insulted at being included for her perceived ethnicity.

“After I read it, I read the names [of the other recipients] and they were just Hispanic last names,” said a student of Santiago Piñón, assistant professor of religion. (The student asked not to be identified by name. ) The message, addressed last week to her and eight other students — a copy of which was obtained by Inside Higher Ed –  invited them to a special meeting Piñón said he wouldn’t mind ending up as “a study session for my STUDENTS OF COLOR ONLY [emphasis his].”

Here is the full text of the e-mail:

“I thought, ‘Is this really happening?’” the student said. “I laughed, in shock, as my immediate reaction.”

[SharpRightTurn]

Heaven forbid that Students of Non-Color would receive equal treatment from these Khmer Rouge professors.

[Arm_Bears]

Does the school receive any type of federal funding?

If so, turn off the money spigot.

[FrdmLvr]

Soft bigotry of low expectations right there.

[vetvetdoug]

Fire the pompous racist Professor. Had the professor excluded the minorities he’d been skinned and hanged.

[TheCipher]

Reminds me of a statistics class a took years ago. It was taught by a Chinese professor. The textbook we were using did not have an accompanying answer book. As a result when we did the problems, there was no way to check if we got the answers correct. No problem. The professor wrote and answer book and put it in the library. The only problem was, he wrote it in CHINESE !! Therefore , only the Chinese students had access to the answers.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Some interesting reviews on “Rate My Professor”.

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1653493

Overall, it sounds like he is young, enthusiastic, and selected a poor choice for words. I suspect this is because he gets a lot of Latino students at TCU whose English language skills are not the greatest. Or at least would understand subtleties better in Spanish.

Likewise, the demographics at TCU are somewhat different, with 59% of the undergraduates female, and far below the national average in black students.

http://i.imgur.com/pcg88fT.jpg

Importantly, his course is of Latino religious and cultural studies, which has a huge amount of material from which to choose.

[HenpeckedCon]

“Therefore , only the Chinese students had access to the answers.”

Learn Chinese then you sexist, racist, bigoted homophobe!

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Overall, it sounds like he is young, enthusiastic, and selected a poor choice for words.

It sounds like he is a stupid racist bigot who doesn't know his butt from a hole in the ground. His job is words. Poor choice? It is to laugh. He said what he meant exactly as he meant it. His message was that you people with darker skin are stupid.

I can imagine what my niece would say to this hunk of racist muck. They would be cleaning up what was left of him with a dust pan and broom.

[GeronL]

whatever happened to the plan in Alabama to let minorities pass with lower scores than whites?

How is that for equality?

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

My point was that, since he is Latino, and probably the majority of his students are Latino, he likely has a large number who are not proficient enough in English, and have problems with the written material.

Based on the student reviews, he runs a stiff course, with a lot of reading, which is essential to pass his tests.

Years ago, they actually tried to calculate reading frustration, and when most students give up. A barely tolerable rate was 1 in a thousand words that if you didn’t understand it, you would still press on. If you get up to about 3 per thousand a lot of people give up.

However, if you get guidance while you’re reading, it goes a long way to reducing this frustration.

This being said, I will hold off about labeling him until there is more evidence one way or another.

[DungeonMaster]

work 101

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

So because they are Latino they are stupid and illiterate.

And they were only admitted because of AA.

That seems to be this racist hunk of muck's point of view.

After all expecting a college student to be able to read is totally unreasonable.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

You seem to be reading a whole bunch of stuff in there that isn’t in the article.

However, I can factually state that a large number of Latino college students learned English as a second language, and while literate are not necessarily as literate in English as natural born Americans raised with English. It doesn’t mean that they are illegal aliens, or even naturalized citizens, just that their household language when growing up was Spanish.

A literate American who speaks German would be similarly disadvantaged in studying Goethe in Germany. It doesn’t mean he is inferior in any way, just that he might miss much of the subtlety of Goethe that Germans would culturally notice.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

You seem to be projecting.

The man did not send the invitation out to students who were having trouble in the class he sent them to students who had what he thought was a "Latino" sounding name.

This is the definition of bigotry. He just assumed that because their name was Cruz rather then Zimmerman that they were "Latino" and so they must need racist hunk of muck's oh so wise and benevolent help. Because being Latino they were obviously going to have trouble living up to college standards.

And of course students with last names like Fujimori and O'Higgins could just go off and fail because he was only interested in helping "students of color". Racist hunk of muck should be fired because he is not only racist he is stupid.