Editorial: Play by your own rules

Due dates. Students have them. So why don’t teachers? We labor, day in and day out, to hand in projects on time, to adhere to the teacher’s calendars, and to study, even if it takes all night, for the next day’s big test. Sure, we complain, but we get the work done in a timely manner, or we’re penalized for it. Unfortunately, it’s tough to say the same for some teachers.

Students are not the only ones who should be bound to a stringent schedule. If teachers assign a huge essay, they should have it graded for us in a reasonable amount of time. The same goes for tests. It does students a disservice to make them wait until the last weeks of a quarter to figure out what our grade will be. Tests that we took in the first days of a quarter shouldn’t be left ungraded until report cards.

Sure, late grades are annoying; but it’s even more than that. No matter how much we complain about the massive pile of work lying ahead of us each week, we get it done. Some teachers, on the other hand, come in day after day with excuses about why they cannot get our work back to us. If we came in with that, we’d be scholastically slapped across the face—i.e. given an F.

Obviously, teachers are allowed to grade our work whenever they want. They are teachers, after all. But to come in, tell students how awful of a work load they have, or how all of the papers they’ve had to grade have kept them from finishing over the weekend, is another story. In fact, the teacher is precisely the one who handed out the assignment, so there really isn’t anyone they can blame but themselves.

It should be noted that plenty of teachers do not complain inordinately and return things in an equitable amount of time without any harrumphs. We are sincerely grateful and appreciative for the time and effort they put in and do not want to disparage their work. Further, there are obviously extenuating circumstances in which personal issues prevent a teacher from grading assignments and we respect that, especially when most teachers would afford the same leeway to students.

However it is the groans of the others that make our ears bleed. Though teachers obviously can do whatever they want in regards to grading and must be respected, regardless of how much we may disagree with their policy, there comes a point where protesting the unfairness of the situation is not unreasonable. Students aren’t the only ones to claim “the dog ate my homework!”

Question of the Month

Is using someone else’s notes in lieu of your own ethical? Why or why not?

If they don’t take notes and they had the opportunity to, that is laziness. Kids should be using their own notes unless they were absent and are sharing with someone.
--Mervyn Elder, physics and math teacherI think that it is fine. Information is information. I don’t think it makes a difference what source of information you use to progress in class. Whatever you find works best for you is the best way to go, so if your notes aren’t cutting it, and someone else’s are, then there is nothing unethical about that.
--Arman Hassan, '14It’s ethical unless the notes are graded or checked for completion. Collaboration helps everyone involved, and students should work smarter instead of harder.
--Erica Hummel, '12Well since not a single student can swear with certainty they’ve never touched someone else’s notes, I’d say it’s only really unethical if you steal them or use them for an assignment worth points. Just use the word "please". Or get the Weiner notes.
--Adam Cohen-Nowak, '12Yes because it provides an alternate perspective to be incorporated into your own knowledge. Also while using another person’s notes one can still attain the knowledge from answering questions with them.
--Henry Gao, '13

Using someone else’s notes, by any means, is not the optimal choice, but there is reason behind people’s doing it. If a student’s notes are generally badly taken, he or she may have the inclination to use others’ notes to fill gaps that they missed, which is understandable. Students shouldn’t use it as an excuse to be lazy, though, because they won’t end up learning anything if they just read off the notes of a friend, instead of learning for themselves. --Cameron Pollack, '14

Letter to the editor

In Danny Kane’s Op-Ed, “Universities: Universalize,” he concludes with the statement, “if a student can’t cut it at a national level, they do not belong at an elite university.” I do agree in some sense with this statement—but so do college admissions officers. Barring certain exceptions, top-notch schools do not accept students who do not succeed on the SAT or ACT. These elite universities could fill their freshman classes twice over with SAT perfect-scorers, and rather are looking for any reason they can find not to accept you.

A particularly low SAT score is an understandable reason not to accept an applicant—but what can you really say about one kid who scores a 740 and another who scores a 790? I agree with Danny that it is unlikely that a successful, intelligent individual will do terribly on the SAT just because they are a “bad test-taker.” However, a student’s comfort in a given test-taking environment can be a minor influence on at least a question or two, which can produce somewhat significant alterations to a student’s final score, especially in the upper, competitive score range. The SAT does a fine job of sorting students into general categories—I think the difference between a 500 and a 750 is significant enough to require consideration, but this is fairly irrelevant for elite universities, as most of their applicant’s scores will fall in the 700-800 range. Making decisions based on numbers in this range can be dangerous.

When I took the SAT, you could miss one mathematics question on an otherwise perfect exam and get a 2370 total score, whereas if you missed three reading questions and two writing questions, you would get a perfect 2400. I now attend a technology school, at which the average SAT math score is probably pretty close to 800. As someone who did not get a perfect score on his SAT math section, I might not have been admitted if my math SAT score was the primary factor in that decision. However, many of my friends at college come to me for help on their math problem sets, and almost all of them scored perfect 800s on their SAT math sections. Whatever issues I had with finding the area of a circle on SAT day two years ago do not seem to correlate with any difficulties in working with more abstract mathematical concepts like groups, vector spaces, and differentiable manifolds.

We should also remember that not everyone can afford tutors and practice books like so many of us LMers can and do afford. The SAT is a relatively short and predictable thing—if you started training for it in middle school, with a good enough tutor and sufficient encouragement from your parents, you could practically ace that thing with your eyes closed. Is a kid who scores a 2100 on the first try with no preparation necessarily less intelligent than a kid who trains for years with a tutor and scores a 2400? If universities were to truly “universalize” their admissions process, they could not do it with SATs and ACTs, because what happens before the test is not universally standardized.

Standardized tests do provide a certain type of useful information, but alone they are not sufficient. GPAs are not free from flaws or inconsistencies, as Danny correctly points out, but they too can provide useful information, as can interviews, teacher recommendations and essays. While the college application process can seem elaborate and interminable to the applicant, this system is functional, albeit not entirely flawless or entirely fair—but that is the way of all systems, isn’t it?

Sincerely,
Jake Wellens, '11

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As legislators from around the world threaten to quash the overnight activities of Occupy Wall Street protestors, opinion on whether or not the movement is noble or negligent remains divided. In an attempt to change the hearts and minds of those either opposed or dismissive of the movement, I have assembled some frequently asked questions, with the hope that facts shall truly alter the people’s perspective of Occupy Wall Street. [more]

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Grandpa Joe drinks too much and has decided to tear around the neighborhood on his walker. Aunt Tracy is going through her third divorce and can’t stop telling everyone how miserable it is. Your cousins are so obnoxious you want to sock them all. On the surface, extended family seems like nothing more than a group of eccentric people that you’re forced to see over the holidays. I dread Thanksgiving every year, because it’s filled with making cheap small talk, spending long hours socializing with crazy people, and parents hissing at me for acting morose. Until recently, I couldn’t say I knew much more about any of my relatives than their names. [more]

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We live in a very well intentioned society that values and has neared gender equality. Marriages aren’t arranged and don’t have the bride vow to “obey,” prostitution is illegal in forty-nine out of fifty states, females and males are distributed practically equally in the American workforce, and females and males have almost all of the same legal rights. However, whether or not we know it, acknowledge it, or like it, sexism still exists. [more]

Save women's soccer

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A great injustice is brewing in the world of professional sports. The WPS (Women’s Professional Soccer), the women’s professional league that employs the likes of Hope Solo and Abby Wambach, who led the US national team to great heights and inspired millions of soccer fans in the Women’s World Cup this year, is in desperate need of a modest investment to save its very existence. Meanwhile, the NBA, a four billion dollar a year enterprise, has concluded a stubborn lock-out that literally squandered hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues. It is time for the public to step in, save WPS, and send a clear message on what we expect of our athletes. [more]