I don’t mean to sound like a broken record BUT: if the students beliefs were SO STRONG, they should have checked out what the program offered and what they would be doing as part of that program prior to applying to it. A private school who’s belief system is more in line with the student in question would have been a better choice..

Some accountability must rest in the student in this case…

You can call it what you want, but all professors/teachers, from kindergarten on, have power over students. The teacher sets up the assignments, the rules, assigns the grades, etc. And while I don’t think EMU is “second rate,” the quality of the school doesn’t have much influence over this inherent power relationship one way or the other.

I don’t think this relationship doesn’t enslave my students, but it does have consequences. For example, my students can choose not to complete an assignment or a reading or something in the name of doing what they want. But the consequence will probably be reflected in their grade in the course.

Oh, and I don’t have any GAs nor any personal slaves, the “power trips” of an English professor are modest at best, and I enjoy the two-legged jump into the pants approach to dressing.

In the department I’m in (English), we have graduate assistants teaching classes like English 121 (aka first year writing). On the one hand, these GAs are teaching their own classes and are just like “regular” instructors or professors. They are responsible for planning their classes, doing their own grading, getting evaluations, dealing with the classroom logistics, etc., etc. I think we give them a lot of leeway to do what they want.

On the other hand, they are also taking courses in writing pedagogy and they are being supervised by writing program administrators, who are faculty charged with the job. I did this for a year a couple years ago. This supervision is designed to give support to the GA, who generally doesn’t have a lot of previous teaching experience, and it is also set up to make sure that the GA does teaching that is fitting with program goals. In other words, without getting into the nitty-gritty of teaching writing, GA instructors can’t just do anything they want. So hypothetically, if I was the writing program administrator and I had a graduate assistant who “refused” for some reason to do some part of the job based on moral/ethical/religious/political/whatever reasons, then I’d probably have a problem and I might not want to continue that GA relationship.

What I’m saying is the graduate assistant teaching first year writing is both a teacher AND a student, meaning they aren’t quite as empowered to do whatever they want. And I would guess that the student in the counseling program is also both a counselor AND a student and can thus not refuse to do or not do whatever they want.

But like I said, this is mostly an educated guess; maybe someone from that program who knows better can set me straight. So to speak.

Maybe JOE, JEFF, and PROUD AMERICAN come out of closet and have Teabag Party with Zombie Reagen soon.

Zombie Reagen love to teabag JOE, JEFF, and PROUD AMERICAN.