Posted on 11/27/2013 2:33:10 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Racial tensions are inflamed at the University of California at Los Angeles following several incidents — most notably, one where a professor corrected the grammar, punctuation and capitalization in minority students’ assignments.
The act of correcting a black student was “micro-aggression,” according to the members of the student group “Call 2 Action: Graduate Students of Color,” which launched a sit-in during a subsequent meeting of the class.
“A hostile campus climate has been the norm for Students of Color in this class throughout the quarter as our epistemological and methodological commitments have been repeatedly questioned by our classmates and our instructor,” wrote the group in a statement to the college. “[The] barrage of questions by white colleagues and the grammar ‘lessons’ by the professor have contributed to a hostile class climate.”
Some 25 students participated in the sit-in, including five of the 10 members of the class.
Val Rust, a professor of education and information, was the official target of the sit-in, though the aggrieved minority students had problems with UCLA’s handling of racial issues that went far beyond just one classroom, according to Inside Higher Ed.
Rust is guest-lecturing in China this week, and did not respond to a request for comment. He sent a letter to his colleagues in the education department, however, in which he clarified that he meant no offense to minorities.
“I have attempted to be rather thorough on the papers and am particularly concerned that they do a good job with their bibliographies and citations, and these students apparently don’t feel that is appropriate,” he said in a statement, according to The Daily Bruin.
Some of the corrections were clarified by sit-in organizer Kenjus Watson. Rust told one student that she should not capitalize the word “indigenous” in her papers. This correction was ideologically-motivated, according to Watson.
Rust admitted that he likely made matters worse by not aggressively and proactively taking the side of a minority student who was engaged in an argument with a white female student. The minority student told the woman that she had no right to feel oppressed, and Rust did not express agreement either way.
“Two weeks ago a Student of Color and a white female student got into a big discussion,” said Rust. “She wants to use Standpoint Theory [a method of analysis coined by feminist sociologist Dorothy Smith, based on the idea that all knowledge is subjective and based on one's position in society] in her dissertation, and the Student of Color told her she had no business claiming that she was a member of an oppressed group.”
“She came back saying there are all kinds of oppression. I likely did not handle the situation well, because I chose not to stop the discussion between them, so it went on for quite a while, and the Students of Color apparently interpreted my silence to mean I wasn’t supporting them.”
But the minority community at UCLA is upset about more than just Rust’s class. A recent report claimed that minority professors are the victims of discrimination and racial bias. The report urged the university to strengthen its bias incident response procedures and hire a Discrimination Officer.
“What we’re speaking to is part of a larger, institutionalized culture on campus,” said Watson in a statement.
The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
I attended a private women’s college in the 1990’s. In history, a black femal student had her head on her desk in front of me, asleep. After class, I asked her if she was worried she missed the review for the upcoming test and her response was, “If I fail, you will just pay me to take the class again.”
According to Wikipedia, the man is 78 years old. I would have walked away from that place a long time ago.
They'll demand everyone use the term 'People of Color', take offense at the term "colored people", and then say it's not fair to expect them to be grammatically correct in their academic work.
Seems like it's just a game to establish a pecking order of who gets to make who jump through what hoops.
I wonder if they think “spell check” is racist.
Does this mean our computer spell check programs are rasis?
Of course, before you can start a new debate, you have to get halfway through the first debate. And you can't get halfway through the first debate unless you get halfway to halfway through the debate. And, naturally, you can't get halfway to halfway through the debate unless....
CC
You can tell who rules over you by whom you’re not allowed to criticize.
Is this satire? I wish that it were. We really have reached the end-game of the Aggrieved / Victim Society if punctuation is now racist. A society is dead which wastes it time humoring this sort of horse hockey. The proper response would be to laugh them out of the classroom.
And who wants to by who tries to tell you that you can't.
These complaints are juvenile.
I hope if this young student ever needs an artificial heart she gets one designed by an engineer adherent of standpoint theory. That is if such an engineer could exist.
This hypersensitivity is not about being offended at all,
it’s about “how many hoops can we make you jump through”.
It’s about asserting power and supremacy.
Q. What’s the difference between a philosophy major and a large pizza?
A. A large pizza can feed a family of four.
Are not each of us ‘Student(s) of Colour’? The colour God made me was pale pink, though sometimes tending to bright red after too long in the sun. On cold Calgary winter mornings, sometimes a bluish hue! The comments by the professor are so PC.
Almost exactly what I was going to say. What the professor said about not “defending” a minority student is nuts. Once you get to this level, really, graduate school, how can you complain about oppression. You have done more than the MAJORITY of white people in this country.
These are grad students in education. Most of them will end up administering public schools in urban areas. Their idiocy will then contaminate the young people in this country who most need a worthwhile school experience.
Haiti uses creole, but when they write completely in French the result looks COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS —every single word is misspelled.
“Ai kut mai han wid da naif”
Like that. You can vaguely detect it IS French but the reading process is very tiring and its very hard to take the writer seriously at all.
You could be the President of Haiti but if you wrote one sentence like that you would seem like a 5 year old with a twirly hat and poopy pants.
If blacks have very strong confidence that they are in charge then after some decades standard are completely discarded and things end up as in haiti.
THAT is where UCLA is headed.
“Good thing you majored in Philosophy.... now you can sit around and think about why you don’t have a job”...
——Unknown
How about different rules for Whites and non-Whites? The professor would correct grammar and punctuation only on White papers. Non-Whites would get a free pass, like they do on everything else, and be able to write any wAy, dey please; an Still get dose A marks- wile dose wHiteys, dey gots to rite da rite way- nomsayin?
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