Wisconsin Plan to eliminate Liberal Arts at the University of Wisconsin

[DMC]

So last week I did ask a friend of mine at UW-Whitewater about this, and he didn't have much of an encouraging response.  It's likely to continue to happen, and the only solace he was able to offer is they're going to try to employ affected faculty in other relevant areas.  When I pointed out most other areas would be abolished as well, we got another drink.

[Zorral]

13 hours ago, maarsen said:

I am Canadian. I go to Cuba to drink the beer and enjoy the beaches and escape the cold weather.  I did go to visit Havana this time. 

Of course!  USians aren't allowed to do that sort of tourist thing.

Not that this matters to me, personally, as my Cuba sojourns aren't holidays, but professional excursions for research, family, etc.

 

[Zorral]

More bulletins from higher education in Wisconsin -- and this one is, yah, scary, but in a different way, in the way that being an educator at any level in this country, and being a student at any level in this country, is scary now:

https://www.salon.com/2018/03/31/red-flags-in-writing-class-surviving-their-violent-fantasies-and-targeted-rage/

[Centrist Simon Steele]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

More bulletins from higher education in Wisconsin -- and this one is, yah, scary, but in a different way, in the way that being an educator at any level in this country, and being a student at any level in this country, is scary now:

https://www.salon.com/2018/03/31/red-flags-in-writing-class-surviving-their-violent-fantasies-and-targeted-rage/

Can you give us the gist of the article? Salon wants me to disable my ad blocker, and for a lot of reasons (not to derails thread), I don't do that. 

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

Can you give us the gist of the article? Salon wants me to disable my ad blocker, and for a lot of reasons (not to derails thread), I don't do that. 

Creative writing teachers (and other faculty too) at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh branch confront the dangers of very angry young males who threaten her / them with guns and other violence, in texts, and f2f. -- as well as in the assignments.

Classes meet in basements with no windows or exits.  As you may or may not know, creative writing courses, like all writing courses, whether freshman English, business report courses, etc. are all about the criticism.  These guys can't or won't handle that. They take it as personal attack.  Truly, if someone can't accept criticism -- and I am not speaking of using professional criticism of writing as a personal attack -- regardless of the mythology, few people involved with writing do this or even want to!) they have no place trying to write professionally, much less be in a course.

After a particularly threatening episode she had to cancel a class because of fear of one of these students -- she'd feared others, but this was so off the charts she couldn't go in.

The administration poo poos these faculty concerns. Their recommendations to the (female) faculty -- be more understanding, be motherly, be nurturing, remember not all people who utter threats are really threatening. 

Nor is there any training as to what to do if someone does come to class and start shooting.  She also recounts some dreadful events of violence committed on her campus by students, and which admin has basically ignored and kept quiet.

She's been teaching English, literature and writing since 2004.

[IamMe90]

3 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

Can you give us the gist of the article? Salon wants me to disable my ad blocker, and for a lot of reasons (not to derails thread), I don't do that. 

FYI, opening a link to an article in an incognito window in Chrome (right click link > "open link in incognito window") will prevent this. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

22 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

 

Either way, I've always thought the first to go would be the English departments that refused to change, yet here we have a massive slash to all humanities. That's shocking to me. It shows education is viewed primarily as a vehicle for employment. Nothing more.

Breathtakingly depressive to see this herd mentality that we are meant to only be trained worker ants and no other formal channels/paths in life, need to be supported or valued.

In terms for quality of life, I view this as a race to the bottom, these are the actions of a nation in decline.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Creative writing teachers (and other faculty too) at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh branch confront the dangers of very angry young males who threaten her / them with guns and other violence, in texts, and f2f. -- as well as in the assignments.

Classes meet in basements with no windows or exits.  As you may or may not know, creative writing courses, like all writing courses, whether freshman English, business report courses, etc. are all about the criticism.  These guys can't or won't handle that. They take it as personal attack.  Truly, if someone can't accept criticism -- and I am not speaking of using professional criticism of writing as a personal attack -- regardless of the mythology, few people involved with writing do this or even want to!) they have no place trying to write professionally, much less be in a course.

After a particularly threatening episode she had to cancel a class because of fear of one of these students -- she'd feared others, but this was so off the charts she couldn't go in.

The administration poo poos these faculty concerns. Their recommendations to the (female) faculty -- be more understanding, be motherly, be nurturing, remember not all people who utter threats are really threatening. 

Nor is there any training as to what to do if someone does come to class and start shooting.  She also recounts some dreadful events of violence committed on her campus by students, and which admin has basically ignored and kept quiet.

She's been teaching English, literature and writing since 2004.

This is a real problem. As a writing teacher, I often think too about violent stories in general. People say we should report overly violent content, but I disagree; however, this problem seems to be much more clear cut. Thank you for sharing.

59 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

FYI, opening a link to an article in an incognito window in Chrome (right click link > "open link in incognito window") will prevent this. 

I had no idea...I'm getting so outpaced by tech.

9 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Breathtakingly depressive to see this herd mentality that we are meant to only be trained worker ants and no other formal channels/paths in life, need to be supported or valued.

In terms for quality of life, I view this as a race to the bottom, these are the actions of a nation in decline.

I think so too. A lot of the time, even talking like Scot--that education is about exploration of the self as much as it is about anything else--is dismissed quickly as idealistic nonsense. But then we see the dismissal of the humanities in large swaths and it's terrifying. And, too, how can we have students justify studying at the university level for purposes other than employment when they'll leave school carrying loan debt the size of a new home?

[Altherion]

22 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

Either way, I've always thought the first to go would be the English departments that refused to change, yet here we have a massive slash to all humanities. That's shocking to me. It shows education is viewed primarily as a vehicle for employment. Nothing more.

Given the money that colleges and universities charge nowadays, it pretty much has to be a vehicle for employment if only to give people the means to repay their loans.

28 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Creative writing teachers (and other faculty too) at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh branch confront the dangers of very angry young males who threaten her / them with guns and other violence, in texts, and f2f. -- as well as in the assignments.

That's a rather peculiar interpretation of it -- you are taking the author's paranoia and ramping it up. For example, here's something submitted in an assignment that frightened her:

Quote

The first time this happened, “Hugo” submitted an Eminem tribute to my faculty mentor. This was a few semesters before she retired. Hugo was infuriated because she’d had the audacity to line-edit the first draft of his earlier poem. Violent couplets were his retaliation.

“My words are like a dagger with a jagged edge/That'll stab you in the head.”

He's probably not going to be a poet, but there's a whole lot of poems with graphic similes. And it's not that the student sent her text messages:

Quote

A week later, one of Hugo’s friends was waiting for me after Advanced Fiction to show me text messages Hugo had sent him during my class. He was wary of Hugo’s anger and wanted to make me aware. I hate this class. It’s a waste of time. They can all go fuck themselves.

These are, nearly verbatim (adjusted for culture and translation), the words of practically every college student ever describing a class the student doesn't like. Her response to this is to look him up in a court database in which she finds that he was cited for shooting people from his balcony with an Airsoft gun (this is not even a BB gun, but a toy) at which point she cancels classes and escalates this to the dean. She describes several other incidents involving male students who, as far as I can tell from the article, never actually hurt anyone but either looked angry or boasted of an all-meat diet or misbehaved in class or something of the sort. For each of these, she goes to her superiors and is told, in far more polite terms, to tone down the paranoia which predictably makes her angry.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

Given the money that colleges and universities charge nowadays, it pretty much has to be a vehicle for employment if only to give people the means to repay their loans.

That's a rather peculiar interpretation of it -- you are taking the author's paranoia and ramping it up. For example, here's something submitted in an assignment that frightened her:

He's probably not going to be a poet, but there's a whole lot of poems with graphic similes. And it's not that the student sent her text messages:

These are, nearly verbatim (adjusted for culture and translation), the words of practically every college student ever describing a class the student doesn't like. Her response to this is to look him up in a court database in which she finds that he was cited for shooting people from his balcony with an Airsoft gun (this is not even a BB gun, but a toy) at which point she cancels classes and escalates this to the dean. She describes several other incidents involving male students who, as far as I can tell from the article, never actually hurt anyone but either looked angry or boasted of an all-meat diet or misbehaved in class or something of the sort. For each of these, she goes to her superiors and is told, in far more polite terms, to tone down the paranoia which predictably makes her angry.

Hm, this is a different story. This is more in line with what I struggled with when students wrote violent things. How do we judge that? Do we have a right? How many students who write also write violent imagery and go on to lead normal productive lives? We can't say, but I'd imagine it's a lot.

When I was an undergrad, I lived in college housing, and the guys were always shooting airsoft guns from the balconies late on Friday nights after heavy drinking. You learned to not go out when you heard them hooting and howling out there. This was back in 2006.

[DMC]

43 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Hm, this is a different story. This is more in line with what I struggled with when students wrote violent things. How do we judge that? Do we have a right? How many students who write also write violent imagery and go on to lead normal productive lives? We can't say, but I'd imagine it's a lot.

My training was if it's really bad, you notify the counseling center.  Even if it's just a grey area, I usually encourage them toward the counseling center and offer to take them.  Although this is not much of a problem instructing political science, I suppose there's much more grey area in the liberal arts.

[Zorral]

Quote

These are, nearly verbatim (adjusted for culture and translation), the words of practically every college student ever describing a class the student doesn't like. 

Absolutely NOT!  Speaking as someone who has successfully negotiated more than one degree granting program at accredited, nationally known institutions of higher learning -- we didn't do this, write this, etc.

This atmosphere is entirely different from when I was in school as a student back then.

Now -- it's very different.  Students have become 1) people to be protected; 2) people who may kill us all -- students and teachers alike.

 

[DMC]

19 minutes ago, Zorral said:

 2) people who may kill us all -- students and teachers alike.

I don't think that's a productive way to view the situation.  Be more cognizant and proactive about warning signs, sure, but we're still talking about an infinitesimal percentage here.  I know the first time I go into a classroom viewing my students as potential spree killers is the last time I go into the classroom.

[Larry of the Lawn]

2 hours ago, dmc515 said:

My training was if it's really bad, you notify the counseling center.  Even if it's just a grey area, I usually encourage them toward the counseling center and offer to take them.  Although this is not much of a problem instructing political science, I suppose there's much more grey area in the liberal arts.

Not picking on you but this is a uselessly broad and subjective standard.  Is it more specific than this and you're just summing it up, or was your training literally "if it's really bad do something"?

Re: the example from the creative writing class:

What kind of a position is this professor in if the student ends up shooting or stabbing someone?  I think the text message is a stretch for a threat bit the stabbing in the head bit seems like a legitimate cause for concern.  

Obviously a creative writing class needs to have some leeway for expressing yourself, but I remember that in both the intro one I took in college the professors were extremely specific about what kind of content was and wasn't acceptable, and what was and wasn't encouraged.  Violence was fine as content but (at least the in intro class) the professor made it clear that you would be questioned about what its purpose was.

Maybe this was just because it was right after 9/11 in DC but with all the rhetoric about 'if you see something say something's and the rash of school shootings do we really expect that the stabbing line is going to go unreported everytime?  Especially as a response to the professor?

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Not picking on you but this is a uselessly broad and subjective standard.  Is it more specific than this and you're just summing it up, or was your training literally "if it's really bad do something"?

The training was slightly more specific, but still overly broad yeah.  When it boils down to it, it's entirely subjective anyway.  And while I may tend towards more leeway generally because I used quite a bit of colorful language myself in undergrad, like I said I don't really have the problems a creative writing class would.  If someone expresses something disturbing in a poly sci essay or verbally, 99 times out of 100 it's pretty clear and you just use common sense.

[Altherion]

58 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Absolutely NOT!  Speaking as someone who has successfully negotiated more than one degree granting program at accredited, nationally known institutions of higher learning -- we didn't do this, write this, etc.

We didn't write it either, but we certainly said it. Which part of it do you find so objectionable? There are only 3 statements there:

I hate this class.

Practically everyone I know who went to college or school has said this at one point or another.

It’s a waste of time.

This goes hand in hand with the statement above together with its close relative "Why in the world do we have to study this?"

They can all go fuck themselves.

This is idiomatic so one has to translate from culture to culture, but again, there is nothing out of the ordinary here.

[Larry of the Lawn]

4 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

The training was slightly more specific, but still overly broad yeah.  When it boils down to it, it's entirely subjective anyway.  And while I may tend towards more leeway generally because I used quite a bit of colorful language myself in undergrad, like I said I don't really have the problems a creative writing class would.  If someone expresses something disturbing in a poly sci essay or verbally, 99 times out of 100 it's pretty clear and you just use common sense.

Sure, that makes sense, but again, I think it'd be pretty easy to have two very reasonable, attentive, and engaged professors interpret specific language very differently.  I think 'common sense' is almost meaningless and usually boils down to 'whatever makes sense to me'.  

Under any similar policy, we should expect lots of these incidents to be reported accordingly.  

And given the current continuing climate of high-profile school shootings, I'd assume (quite possibly wrongly) that in a case that may have been considered 'grey' before, it'll be more likely to be reported now.  

 

[DMC]

24 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Sure, that makes sense, but again, I think it'd be pretty easy to have two very reasonable, attentive, and engaged professors interpret specific language very differently.  I think 'common sense' is almost meaningless and usually boils down to 'whatever makes sense to me'.

Well, yeah, interpretation will be different, and it should be.  For instance, if any of my female colleagues received an implicit threat that's something I and I hope them would take more seriously than my white male ass.  But in terms of explicit language, at least in my field, there is a bright line that is pretty much common sense, whether you think that's meaningless or not.

30 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

And given the current continuing climate of high-profile school shootings, I'd assume (quite possibly wrongly) that in a case that may have been considered 'grey' before, it'll be more likely to be reported now.  

In the thousands of students I've instructed, I have yet to have one even approach a grey area.  Maybe I'm lucky or maybe again that's the nature of poly sci courses, but regardless I really couldn't speak to this.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

I hate this class.

Practically everyone I know who went to college or school has said this at one point or another.

It’s a waste of time.

This goes hand in hand with the statement above together with its close relative "Why in the world do we have to study this?"

They can all go fuck themselves.

This is idiomatic so one has to translate from culture to culture, but again, there is nothing out of the ordinary here.

Agree with the first two, strongly disagree on the third.  I've never gotten the first two verbatim, but certainly have heard that sentiment and even a few occasions written.  That's part of being a student.  However, if someone wrote "they can all go fuck themselves" on an assignment/test/etc., I would definitely report it.  And even if it was just said, I would sit down with the student and I can't think of a situation in which I wouldn't notify and recommend counseling.  That's one of those bright lines I was referring to.

[Altherion]

25 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Agree with the first two, strongly disagree on the third.  I've never gotten the first two verbatim, but certainly have heard that sentiment and even a few occasions written.  That's part of being a student.  However, if someone wrote "they can all go fuck themselves" on an assignment/test/etc., I would definitely report it.  And even if it was just said, I would sit down with the student and I can't think of a situation in which I wouldn't notify and recommend counseling.  That's one of those bright lines I was referring to.

I agree with you that if this was on an assignment or a test, it would be worthy of escalation, but this was a text message sent to a friend (who, it turns out, was of the "with friends like these, who needs enemies" type). In that context, it is a fairly generic statement of exasperation or anger with an instructor. It does go a bit further than the first two statements, but not by much and it's unlikely to be much less common -- if you hate the class, chances are you don't like the teacher.