Will guns on campus lead to grade inflation? [View all]

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Will Guns on Campus Lead to Grade Inflation?

By Jessica Smartt Gullion 4/30/15 at 11:48 AM

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With this proposed law, a question coming up for many academics is whether they would be forced to give A grades to undeserving students, just so they can avoid being shot.

This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. In my five years as a college professor, I have had experiences with a number of emotionally distressed students who resort to intimidation when they receive a lesser grade than what they feel they deserve.

Threats on Campus

Here is an example of one such threatening experience. One evening in a graduate course, after I handed back students’ papers, a young woman stood up and pointed at me. “This is unacceptable!” she screamed as her body shook in rage.

She moved toward the front of the class, waving her paper in my face, and screamed again, “Unacceptable!” After a heated exchange, she left the room and stood outside the door sobbing.

All this was over receiving a B on a completely low-stakes assignment.

What followed was even more startling. The following week, the student brought along a muscle-bound man to class. He watched me through the doorway window for the entire three hours of the class, with his arms folded across his chest.

And if this wasn’t enough, the young woman’s classmates avoided me on campus because, they said, they were afraid of getting caught in the crossfire should she decide to shoot me.

After that, every time she turned in a paper I cringed and prayed that it was good so that I wouldn’t have to give her anything less than an A.

Learning from this experience, I now give papers back only at the end of the class or just “forget” to bring them with me. I was lucky that the student didn’t have a gun in my classroom. Other professors have not been so lucky.

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So the question is, Will we soon see a new sort of grade inflation, with students earning a 4.0 GPA with their firepower rather than brainpower? And if so, what sort of future citizenry will we be building on our campuses?

http://www.newsweek.com/will-guns-campus-lead-grade-inflation-327047