From: rcd@raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn)
Subject: Re: Athletics over Academics at CU, surely not.
Organization: eklektix - Boulder, Colorado
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 09:58:22 GMT

For the French final fiasco, it seems there's plenty of blame to go
'round...nobody should be left wanting.

Watching from a vantage on the sidelines, the most disturbing thing is
that, in an (allegedly) academic institution, there was a complete lack of
thinking and problem-solving.

In simple terms, somebody screwed up somewhere and they ended up with two
incompatible events in the same place at the same time.  At that moment,
it should have mattered very little who was right or wrong.  There was a
problem which needed to be solved, and no amount of short-term recrimina-
tion would solve the larger problem.  Moreover, it's notoriously hard to
figure out what went wrong on the spur of the moment.  Leave blame for
later; solve the problem!

How much blame is there to go around?
  - Let's start with the faculty member responsible for the course:  There
    is no excuse for not being available during the final exam.  If there
    is any need for decision or arbitration (and in a class of 580, there
    WILL be), it must be decided by the one person responsible for the
    course.  In the remote event that the faculty member cannot be present
    in the room, another faculty member of comparable standing (which is to
    say, *NOT* a TA!!) should stand in.  Kick ass, and make it clear this
    doesn't go.
  - The folks who schedule exams--on both ends--have screwed up.  Somebody
    is responsible for finding the room and reserving it; somebody should
    be responsible for the overall final exam scheduling and room
    checkoffs.  It appears there's a gap here.  Find out why this stuff
    doesn't get checked.  (Isn't the final exam schedule published?)
  - The poor TAs made the wrong decision (give everybody A's) under
    pressure and without adequate support.  I can't assign a lot of fault
    here, but they should have been able to say "This situation is outside
    our ability/authority--we don't know what will happen" and do something
    better than find a lower bound.
  - The coach should have been able to do something slightly more intelli-
    gent than pulling rank.  Yeah, the basketball team had squatter's
    rights...but anyone with an IQ above room temperature could figure out
    that with almost 600 people who *didn't* have any chance to check the
    scheduling, and whose academic careers are going to be influenced by
    what happens, the intelligent response is to find some useful working
    arrangement whereby everyone can deal with the situation.  I think this
    is where the folks who want to shout about "excessive influence of
    sports" find their support--not that the basketball team didn't have
    the "right" but that there was no attempt to solve the real problem.
  - Who was the admin-type (?Middleton? don't quote me) who said that part
    of the problem was not having enough large classrooms to accommodate
    exams like this?  This must be somebody who slept through the last
    election.  (No, the solution does not lie in adding buildings to com-
    pensate for oversized classes.)

I'll point out this much, from out in the real world:  If somebody in my
group screws up, we don't start off by assigning blame and punishing.  We
figure out (a) what's wrong and (b) how to fix it.  Whoever is available to
help, pitches in.  Obviously we try to get the person who probably caused
the problem to play a major role, but the immediate issue is that the prob-
lem must be solved.  Whoever is available to help, whoever can contribute
useful knowledge, will help.  I've found myself at the office on a weekend
to help fix somebody else's bug; I've also had other people doing major
overtime to help out when I screwed up.

The model presented by the criminal justice system, and the rules which
drive it, serve only as a backstop, brought into play after normal
mechanisms fail.  Using reasoning based on "We did this" and "you forgot
that" may be a sop to small minds and petty fools; it helps nothing.  The
rules are intended to avoid problems; if the rules are neglected it's a
problem, but blindly following the rules and ignoring the problems is how
you win battles and lose wars.
-- 
Dick Dunn    rcd@eklektix.com   -or-   raven!rcd    Boulder, Colorado USA
   ...Mr. Natural says, "Use the right tool for the job."