Tag: black lives matter

On resisting compromises

In response to a white student, active in local protests & passionate about that work, exhausted by it, & frightened by white supremacists in the street & SWAT teams on the roofs nearby, asking that, in consideration of the enormous strain students are under, and so that they can focus on what’s important right now, I cancel the final exam for the whole class.

Dear ______,

I appreciate your sincere and heartfelt words, and I do take them seriously. We need your passion and commitment if crucial changes are going to be made to our unjust, unequal society.

For reasons I’ll try to lay out briefly here, I’m not going to cancel the final. But I can offer you the same accommodation I offered to BIPOC students in our class.

If you feel unable to write the final next week, we’ll have you make it up at another time. That may mean taking an Incomplete (K grade) and getting the work to me after the quarter is done. The make-up would be a short critical essay (1000 words) on ONE of the final essay topics. I’d be reading and grading this essay as finished essay, not as in-class writing, but if you are taking the P/NP option, you wouldn’t need to stress about that.

So why am I not cancelling the final, though it would mean a lot less work for me?

We’re in four simultaneous crises right now: pandemic, economic downturn, systemic racism, and fascist upsurge. You’re out on the street fighting the third. I’m insisting on these standards as resistance to the fourth.

One strategy of fascists, whether they’re on the rise or actually in power, is to attack independent institutions – universities especially. One kind of attack, and this can begin well before a state has become fully authoritarian, is to make it more difficult for us to conduct our business. Instructors, departments, administrations, students too, are put in positions where they have to cut corners, compromise; or just where it would be easier to.

And cancelling the final exam would be a compromise, because it would degrade your education by a little. Studying for an exam, writing an exam, helps students consolidate their learning over the course. Remove the exam, the course is a lesser experience.

If I did what you ask, out of my concern for my students’ anxiety and stress, I’d be giving you a short-term relief, at a long-term cost.

And the cost goes beyond the students themselves to the university as a whole. One instructor would have, because of violent cops and far-right paramilitaries, offered less to, and asked less of, his students. Fascist takeover is the sum of ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a million such compromises.

I want to assist your fight against police brutality and systemic racism. I want also to remember what resistance to fascism requires. So instead of cancelling the exam, I offer an equivalent.

If you’re interested, I’ve written more about this here.

I hope these considerations make sense to you. If you want to take the alternative route, please let me know.

Thank you for your service,
Chris

On a request to cancel final exams in a time of pandemic, racist violence, & erosion of democratic norms

There’s a petition going round, asking instructors at my school to cancel finals for our courses, for Black and POC students in particular, or just for everyone, this quarter.

Here’s what I wrote back to the class as a whole.

My friends,

I’ve received a couple of e-mails asking that, in consideration of the pressures students across the country are under – in particular Black and other POC students – I cancel the final exam for this course.

Having seen the same petition on change.org a few days ago, I’ve had some time to think about the question.

I want to tell you, first, I don’t believe in grades. I hate what they do in us, and to us. Grading is a system we’re inducted in from early childhood, before we can say no to it, that tells us our worth can be measured on a scale.

It’s a terrible thing to tell a person. It serves power, not human beings. Your worth is real, beyond measure. You’re perfect, and there’s nothing wrong, nothing missing.

That’s the place I’m coming from. And so if I had my way, I wouldn’t grade you at all, and our time together would be given to free disinterested inquiry, in a space of mutual respect, compassion, and fiery dispute.

However, I don’t teach at Black Mountain College, or Evergreen State. The structure you and I are in, it calls itself Western Washington University, insists I grade you.

And so, I grade, so that I can teach at all. Hoping that as we go I can invite you to some detachment around grading. Hoping I can grade in a way that spurs learning – of the material, and of appreciation for yourself, your own powers, and your peers, their powers.

Any graded assignment in a course of mine is graded so as to aid learning. Actually, the grade is incidental. If the grade motivates you, do it for the grade. If you don’t care what grade you get – and I hope you don’t – do it for the intrinsic interest of the material, out of your own passion for learning, growing, testing yourself.

Coming back (were you worried I might not?) to the request.

The final exam is not for a grade; the grade is only to focus your mind, your effort. The real point of the final is to consolidate your learning. The studying you do for the exam, the work of writing the exam under some pressure, sinks your learning deeper into you. It helps your free, lively, creative engagement with the material stay with you. It helps the course, everything we took on together, last beyond the end of the quarter.

I’m not going to cancel the final. It’s the culmination of the course, where you draw together everything you’ve learned to a single focused light that illuminates – you, to yourself.

Please, please, do not write the final to please or impress me. Write it to show yourself what you got.

Western created the Pass/No Pass option to invite you to this mindset. That’s why I’ve encouraged students to take it. It acknowledges how extraordinary & difficult the moment we’re in is, and should relieve the pressure you may feel to perform.

If you take the P/NP option, all you have to do to pass the final is show up, and tell me your take on the plays. Don’t stress about it. Be easy on yourself, and when it’s time to do it, just do it.

All that said . . . if you truly feel unable to write the final, e-mail me. Use your own language – not a template, someone else’s eloquence. I’ll take you seriously if you do. I can’t just exempt you from the final (would you respect me, or yourself, if I did?) but I will work with you on alternatives. It would probably mean taking an Incomplete, and finishing the course when you feel able to.

Thanks for reading this far. I wanted to take this request seriously, as a measure of what students are going through right now. Ah, well, we all are.

Please do be well,
Chris