The Policy of Policies

In order to be fair and consistent, I don’t make exceptions to the following policies (that’s the point of a policy).

COVID-19 (and its discontents)

Campus policy is that all students, staff and faculty must be either vaccinated or — if they have an accomodation — submit to a regular testing regimen. All students must have building access with the Safer Illinois app, and may be asked by instructors to show it in order to enter class or at any time during class. Everyone must wear masks in indoor spaces. Any student not wearing a mask or without Safer Illinois access will be asked to leave; refusal to leave or repeated infractions in this class will be considered disruptive behavior, graded accordingly (disruptive students will not receive a passing grade in participation), and referred to campus authorities for further action.  

Accomodations & Disabilities

Students who have a disability should submit their DRES letters to both me and their TA as soon as possible; we are happy to make reasonable accomodations for any student who needs them.  

Grading rubric

A      93-100%

A-    90-92%

B+    87-89%

B      83-86%

B-    80-82%

C+    77-79%

C      73-76%

C-    70-72%

D+    67-69%

D      63-66%

D-    60-62%

F      59%-0%

An A+ is only ever awarded at the instructor's discretion; I've been teaching college for over 25 years, and I believe I have only given out 5 A+ grades in that time. An A+ has no effect on your GPA.

A grade of 82.5% rounds up to 83%, garnering a B instead of a B-; a grade of 82.4% rounds down, and remains a B-. I will only change or alter a student's grade in the case that there is a mathematical error or a grade was entered incorrectly; please do not try to argue your way to a better grade.

Attendance and Participation

Please arrive at discussions having done the reading, prepared to ask questions and actively participate. That means having opinions, asking questions, making observations. Attendance will be taken at every class, or at each discussion section (if this class has a discussion section), and factored in to your participation grade. Students missing more than three weeks of class (or discussion sections) over the course of the semester should be on notice that this will have a particularly significant effect on their grade; students missing five weeks or more of class (or discussion sections in 241-242) over the course of the semester will automatically fail the course, regardless of the reasons for their absence (if you have missed five weeks of a class, this is not something you can make up; you should contact the Emergency Dean; if you haven’t had a serious emergency in your life, then why have you possibly missed five weeks of class?). For a class that meets Tuesday/Thursday, for example, if you miss 10 classes, then you must either drop the class, or receive an F. Much of what we learn in the humanities comes not just from doing the readings, but from being in the class, from the discussions and comments from teachers and fellow students—from human contact and conversation, which is one of the reasons they are called “humanities.” Missing more than a third of that experience means that I cannot fairly or meaningfully compare you or your performance to that of your fellow students.

Screen Time

Very few people love their electronic devices more than I do. I’ve been online since 1987, and have stayed  up to date with the latest technologies as they’ve emerged. And so it is with a heavy heart that I say: close your laptop lids, put away your phones, leave your tablet in your bag. Students  are clearly very, very distracted by digital devices in class. Part of this is a no-brainer: it is not surprising to learn that people don’t pay as much attention to lecture and discussion when also posting to Instagram and buying shoes at Zappos — but many, many people think that they are an exception and can pay attention to both. Unfortunately, studies show that no one can actually multitask and pay attention at the same time. Some younger people assume that this is just a problem for older people who grew up not immersed in a world of continuous Twitter and Discord feeds, but again, I am sorry to report that all the studies show that 18 year-old “digital natives” have exactly the same problems paying attention, focusing and remembering when confronted by a glowing screen as people my age do.

According to studies summarized in “Why the Brain Prefers Paper” (Scientific American 309.5 (2013)), even reading on a screen diminishes both comprehension and recall later on. Again, the effect appeared for all age groups, including studies done only on today’s college students. In one study on college students, those who read on screens were more confident and thought they were better prepared—but they got lower grades on the exam. Students who took notes on laptops consistently typed a lot more words, sometimes writing down almost every word of the lecture—but got lower grades. I do provide .pdfs of some readings because they are searchable and super convenient, but you should use a coursepack to actually read when one is available; you should print out readings before reading them. Bring a piece of paper and a pencil to class to take notes. I will reiterate: every study to date shows that you will understand more, remember more, and get a better grade in the class, if you read on paper, take notes on paper, and leave your Instagram, Twitter, SnapChat, Tik Tok, and everything else alone for 50-70 minutes.

Late Work

Late work will be marked down one "notch" (an A- becomes a B+) for the first week it is late; two notches for the second week. Work more than two weeks late will be given a maximum grade of 50% (still substantially better than nothing, however). You should always contact me or your TA about late work or work not handed in, well in advance of the due date whenever possible, or as soon afterward as you can.

Conflict Final

Unfortunately, students sometimes wish to take the final early: they may wish to attend a sibling’s graduation or start a family vacation early, or they may just want to end the semester as early as possible.  I cannot accommodate such requests—it’s against university policy, and I have no way of knowing whether you’re just knocking off early or whether your twin sister really is graduating from Cal State Long Beach on that day. The only students that the university stipulates may take conflict finals are those who would have to take three final examinations in the same day (see this part of the student code); I will schedule a conflict final only in those cases, or for students with disabilities.  For everyone else, plan to stay for the final exam, even if it is the last final exam scheduled for the semester.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism means “handing in work that you claim is your own original work when it is not.”  Any student who hands in any quantity of any work of any kind for this course that contains material written by someone else (usually taken from the internet, but not always) that is not clearly cited (i.e., with quotation marks, title of article being cited, page numbers, etc.) will receive a failing grade for the entire course.

Whoa! Did you read that right? You did.

Let me give a few examples, so we’re clear about what constitutes plagiarism:  if you hand in a rough draft in which a paragraph is copied from SparkNotes, you will fail the class.  If you hand in an essay in which one sentence is copied from someone else’s personal web site, you will fail the class. If you hand in a response paper in which a couple of unimportant sentences are copied from a web site or a essay you found in the library, you will fail the class. If you write every word of all your essays and are a model student all semester, but copy a couple of sentences on your very last paper, you will fail the class. If you missed all the lectures where I explained this policy, and you didn’t know about the web site where I explain it, and you missed that part of orientation where they explained what plagiarism is, and somehow you grew up not knowing that taking things from other people was wrong, you will still fail the class.

Almost every year that I teach, at least one student fails because of plagiarism or some other form of academic dishonesty—sometimes more than one. If you don't want this terrible thing to happen to you, it's very simple—don't plagiarize! Ask for an extension or turn in a paper a day late — do anything other than copying someone else's work (and those essays that you can get online are generally terrible, C+ quality at best; I am confident you can do better on your own!).