The Fora: A Higher Education Community

You may well be right about this.  I am wondering how the fact that a student who demonstrates mental illness-derived offensive comments at his professor should properly expect that said professor, when grading his term paper, should be allowed to downgrade said term paper on the basis of said student's mental-illness-derived unprofessional conduct?

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on June 19, 2025, 10:42:52 AMI'd like to work on that chapter, although I'm feeling the pull of converting my last conference talk into a paper...

About 800 words of the new paper, 200 of the chapter (but I also sorted out my notes on the subject from previous publications).

He was behaving in an unusual manner and showing sign of mental illness. That's enough to get Student Conduct involved.  Campus Police won't arrest him but they will certainly have him on their radar because he may be behaving badly elsewhere and it may escalate.

When my nephew was 3 he was visiting and he wanted to call his dad. The answering machine came on and he asked "what should I say?" I said "Whatever you want." He giggled and said "Poopoo! Stupid!"

That behavior is fine for a 3-year-old but a young adult, when his PROFESSOR WHO IS GRADING HIM is likely to see it?

That boy is a few fries short of a Happy Meal. A half-bubble off plumb. The cheese done slid off the cracker.

Report what, that the kid told him to go bleep himself?  Overzealous cops may act stupidly, which may as well ratchet up the situation and ultimately make kid do something that he could actually get into real legal trouble for.

Definately pragmatic.  All other responses lead to crazyville. 

Pre-Columbine or pre-Virginia Tech, sure. Now, you don't want to be that faculty member who didn't report.

My experience has been that the police have evolved as well. They are not coming in all SWAT and stuff. They want to make sure everybody is okay. Not 100%. But a whole lot different than 20-25 years ago.

I get that.   Just make sure you do not involve actual cops without clear justification.   Telling the professor to go bleep himself just does not warrant any sort of police record handicapping the student going forward.

I am just quoting from the NY Times article about the girl in Jersey.  Probably it is still up.  And define 'most' states... most is, of course, technically an accurate way to state 'a bare majority', but that is essentially what it is.  In Jersey, for instance, as in Connecticut (recall the 32 yo man who successfully set fire to his own house last winter to escape 21 years of imprisonment by his mommy), the only regulation of homeschooling is that whenever a parent starts to 'homeschool', she has to notify the district that this is what she plans to do. No testing, home visits, etc., after this-- in no wise does this qualify as 'regulation' in any meaningful sense.   IMO, the reason you will find much less regulation of homeschooling in Northeastern states as opposed to in the deep South lies in the distinctive private school tradition we have up here (private schools get even less regulation than homeschooling, esp if the school claims an affiliation with a religious congregation or denomination).  Almost all the laws that apply to pub schools are vastly lessened, too (I worked for a boarding school in CT in the early aughts, where, instead of the mandatory 180 day school year pub schools had to go, we got away with a mandatory minimum of only 135 days). 

Now let us also face facts-- your parents, as well as those in your homeschool set, were by your own acknowledgement a distinctive crew, and much much more qualified to do this than most homeschooling parents.   They almost certainly had more education than the norm, and did not have distinctive religiously-motivated suspicions of, let alone perhaps outright hostility to, education, esp higher ed.  When I taught at the k12 classical Christian school in Rhody, moreover, over the five years I was there we had several parents who had previously homeschooled their kid decide to enroll him  in the school-- in absolutely all of said cases, when we got the kid and gave him a placement evaluation exam, he had to be placed into the grade a year behind his chronological age, because, well, he had just not learned enough to be placed in the same grade with his agemates.  And, contrary to the self-delusional propaganda many homeschooling parents, religious or not, brainwash themselves with, it is indeed true that the vast majority of kids like this also face real social deficits compared to kids who have been schooled traditionally, largely because many of them really do think, and have been encouraged to think, that the world essentially revolves around them.

A thunderstorm passed through an hour ago. Rattling blind slats, thuds coming from the kitchen--plants on window sill had toppled down--, more thuds, lightning and sheets of rain falling sideways, all for the duration of about 10 minutes. We're looking forward to a heat wave next week.

Quote from: kaysixteen on June 19, 2025, 03:04:35 PMWe here haven't actually seen the vid, but it did appear that the language was crude but not threatening, and various posters have had different takes as to whether such language would be tolerated on their campuses.  I am not sure that anything the kid has done would warrant police intervention, which bar would be appropriately high.

I'm just worried about escalation. It can happen. The kid was totally belligerent just because he felt like it. I just don't want it to go to the next level.