The Policy of Policies

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

Attendance and Participation

Please arrive at discussions having done the reading, prepared to ask questions and actively participate. 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 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?). 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 compare you or your performance to that of your fellow students.

Sometimes students have a medical or a personal emergency during the semester; if you have missed a large chunk of class for such a reason, I encourage you to consult with the Emergency Dean about your options, such as a late drop.

Screen Time

Very few people love their electronic devices more than I do. I’ve been online since 1987, and have stayed totally 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. I didn’t want to do this. I really didn’t, but the last two years have been terrible—huge numbers of students who are clearly very, very distracted by digital devices. Part of this is a no-brainer: it is not surprising to learn that students don’t pay as much attention to lecture and discussion when posting to Instagram and buying shoes at Zappos. But many, many people think that they are an exception and, while other people have trouble multitasking, you can do it. 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 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.

It gets worse. 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. Reading for escapist pleasure? By all means, use your iPad, Kindle or Nook. Reading for class? Much better done on paper. I am still providing .pdfs of our 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 to class to take notes. I will reiterate: every study to date shows that you will understand more, remember more, and hence get a better grade in the class, if you read on paper, take notes on paper, and leave your Instagram, Twitter, SnapChat, Vine, KiK, Chat Roulette, and everything else alone for 50-70 minutes, you will do better (and arguably reconnect to life off-line).

Finally, every teacher I have spoken to at the U of I has had the same experience of teaching a class, making an amazingly insightful point, and looking at the students to find that half of them are staring at their crotches and smiling because they’re texting. This does not make us happy. It’s rude and unprofessional. It’s not any better when I look up in a discussion of the Holocaust and see a student grinning at their laptop screen. You won’t be able to get away with it in the work world, so why are you doing it here?

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.  Your TA may elect to accept late work after two weeks, but does not have to:  in any case, work more than two weeks late will be given a maximum grade of 50% (still substantially better than nothing, however). You should always contact 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 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 essay, page numbers, etc.) will receive a failing grade for the entire course.

Let me give a few examples, so we’re clear about what constitutes plagiarism:  if you hand in even 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 stealing 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.