Like Kittenloss said in her or his comment on DeadSpin, where I found this story–thanks to my friend Amy King–I expected, based on the title, “NYU Business School Professor Has Mastered the Art of Email Flaming,” to side with the student, but the details convinced me otherwise. The graduate student, and the graduate part is important, walked into Galloway’s lecture one hour late on the first day of class and Galloway asked him to leave and told him to come back the next day. This is from an email that the student sent to Galloway complaining about the lateness policy–you can’t enter class if you’re more than 15 minutes late–and explaining his lateness:
As of yesterday evening, I was interested in three different Monday night classes that all occurred simultaneously. In order to decide which class to select, my plan for the evening was to sample all three and see which one I like most. Since I had never taken your class, I was unaware of your class policy. I was disappointed that you dismissed me from class considering (1) there is no way I could have been aware of your policy and (2) considering that it was the first day of evening classes and I arrived 1 hour late (not a few minutes), it was more probable that my tardiness was due to my desire to sample different classes rather than sheer complacency.
Here are the barely tongue-in-cheek first paragraphs of Galloway’s response:
Just so I’ve got this straight…you started in one class, left 15-20 minutes into it (stood up, walked out mid-lecture), went to another class (walked in 20 minutes late), left that class (again, presumably, in the middle of the lecture), and then came to my class. At that point (walking in an hour late) I asked you to come to the next class which “bothered” you.
Correct?
You state that, having not taken my class, it would be impossible to know our policy of not allowing people to walk in an hour late. Most risk analysis offers that in the face of substantial uncertainty, you opt for the more conservative path or hedge your bet (e.g., do not show up an hour late until you know the professor has an explicit policy for tolerating disrespectful behavior, check with the TA before class, etc.). I hope the lottery winner that is your recently crowned Monday evening Professor is teaching Judgement and Decision Making or Critical Thinking.
In addition, your logic effectively means you cannot be held accountable for any code of conduct before taking a class. For the record, we also have no stated policy against bursting into show tunes in the middle of class, urinating on desks or taking that revolutionary hair removal system for a spin. However, xxxx, there is a baseline level of decorum (i.e., manners) that we expect of grown men and women who the admissions department have deemed tomorrow’s business leaders.
The rest of the letter is worth reading as well.
For me, what jumps out here–aside from the obvious question of whether Galloway is just being a dick, which I think he is not–is the degree to which this student seems to take for granted that, as a customer of the college, he has the right, because the customer is always right, to do what he did. I have run up against the “I am a customer of this school and you have therefore to give me what I want” thinking a lot over the past couple of years, and it troubles me. There are ways in which students are and should be treated as customers: they have a right to adequate parking, to clean and comfortable facilities, to access to technology, to competent teachers who come to class prepared, etc. But I a not a customer service representative and I resent the hell out of it when students treat me that way.
Cross-posted on It’s All Connected.
Having had one too many graduate students who think they’re entitled to dictate class policy, I feel the overwhelming need to shake Mr./Dr. Galloway’s hand. *filing this away for future use*
Hear, hear.
I do agree with the idea that the student is the customer and the school owes them good service – but “good service” isn’t “I get to do what I want”, it’s “valuable knowledge and exposure to tremendous intellectual stimulation at a fair price”.
Smacking down the entitlement-mentality students protects the investment and experience of the people who are there to learn. Good for him.
Read it and loved it.
I think it’s worth noting – as I’m sure others will note – that part of the reason our American students come to their educations with such a mercenary mindset is that they pay OUT THE NOSE for the privilege. I myself have gotten by on grants, so I may not be the best person to comment, but when I encounter overentitled undergrads I do try to remind myself that the way our education is funded and managed is extremely broken in a way that hurts both teachers and students.
This is not, however, an EXCUSE for students who feel entitled to treat their educators like service providers. If anything, it’s even more important for teachers to preserve a sense of their classrooms as a place where students come to give (and work, and think, and interact) rather than a space they come to receive services paid for. Being a student is itself a job, not a product.
Disagree with you on this one. Class sampling is a good way for the student to protect hir interests and make sure that they end up with the best education they can. It’d be nice if all schools made it possible to make an educated class selection (as, for instance, Sarah Lawrence does), but since they don’t, c’est la vie.
Any professor who is unduly disturbed by having a student walk out 15-20 minutes into a lecture (not even a seminar!) may wish to toughen hir skin.
As for Galloway’s assumption that a student should know in advance that teachers will disallow students from entering if they are more than 15 minutes late–well, that depends on whether it’s really common practice. It’s not where I’m from, so if that’s the case for the student’s experience as well, then hir assumption is reasonable, not distressing. Sie probably should not have written to Galloway about it; Galloway appears to be a jerk, so fair enough. Sie’s sampling classes, and should take another one.
Mandolin:
It’s not the walking out that bothers me; it’s thinking it’s okay, that you are entitled, to walk in an hour late and that the professor is being unreasonable when he asks you to leave and come back the next class. Just because it’s a lecture, does not mean that a student who walks in that late is not unreasonably disruptive; nor does the fact that the professor was lecturing mean the class was large enough that someone walking in that late would be “lost” in the size of the class. (More, the fact that this was a graduate class suggests the class was not that large.) I agree that it would be good for students to have a way to sample classes; and I also would not and do not take Galloway’s stance dealing with undergraduates, at least not on the first day. Otherwise, I too have an if-you-are-more-than-15-minutes-late-don’t-come policy. I generally do not count the absence against the student, but I don’t want the disruption of students coming in that late.
Why wouldn’t a student check in with a professor as a professional courtesy and explain about the sampling beforehand? I totally agree with the OP — I read that expecting to side with the student, but came away siding with the prof.
I think it’s a great rule, but not for the first class of a term. People might have gone to the wrong room or had other good reasons for being late, and they’re not yet on notice of the rule.
And for the price, yes I am a consumer. A couple of years ago I took some classes at a community college; I was in my mid-40s at the time. I resented terribly when the teacher would give in to the younger students (18-, 19-, 20-year olds) when they begged to get out early on a sunny day in spring, or a late evening when the local sports team was playing a game. I also resented the remedial work done when most of the class hadn’t taken prerequesites: I had taken them and wanted to be taught the advanced subject matter, but the class time was spent catching up students who didn’t understand the basic concepts yet. I was paying cash out of my earnings, not spending my parents’ money or a loan from an anonymous bank! If one of my teachers had pulled the 15-minute rule in the first class, you bet I would have objected and taken it up the hierarchy scale if he’d responded to me as he did here.
As a graduate student (who has somehow managed to avoid debt in the process thus far) I guess I understand the feelings of the student. I frequently need to take classes outside of my department, and I am not sure if the class is appropriate for what I am interested in.
You know what I do in that situation? I email the prof. I’ve never encounter a professor who was unwilling to send me a syllabus and talk with me about whether or not the class would actually be useful to me. Hell, I did that as an undergraduate. If I’m unsure about the prof? I ask other students what they thought of the class. It’s not hard.
Walking out in the middle of the lecture is one of the rudest things you can do, in my opinion. (Yes, you can be more rude, but that’s not the point. It does not make it any less rude.) Why? Because it distracts the class, distracts the professor, means that you don’t respect the professor and means that you don’t care about what they have to say. It’s rude in a class of 200, and it’s rude in a class of 20.
My point is, you don’t need to distract the class and disrespect the prof by interrupting class to find out if you should take the class.
As a teacher who has encountered this mindset and this behavior frequently, I still think the professor was wrong in this case. It would have been better for the student to have gotten hold of the professor ahead of time as Krupskaya suggests, but on the first day of the class — and only then — I would cut the student some slack. (Especially because, in the CC where I encountered this behavior, it was often difficult for students to determine in advance who was teaching which section of some classes.) I would, however, point out basic ground rules about attendance while going over the syllabus, and would have pointed it out in particular, after class, to any of those students who had come in late.
“More, the fact that this was a graduate class suggests the class was not that large.”
Point.
And as a grad student, it’s also possible the student would have a more detailed knowledge of the professors and the offerings than an undergrad would have at a large college. Or maybe not; my department was small, and so may not have been representative.
As a graduate student this person has attended, conservatively, 40 different college classes already, at minimum. So it’s not like the idea that professors aren’t keen on people dropping in halfway through the class is some shocking new revelation.
Unless it is, of course. NM says that on the first day of class, this kind of thing would be OK. That’s the problem with having rules with fuzzy boundaries; quite often people don’t recognize that there is a rule, because every time they break it there’s some reason why it was ok.
No compromise! The world is black and white! :)
Let me add: I do not think the email was out of line. If, however, he did in fact forward the email to the rest of the class (as the article says he may have), that is inappropriate. There are better ways to expose students to that ‘teaching moment.’
I’ve only taught martial arts classes and only a few times, but I would always prefer that a person come to some of the class, rather than none, even if they have to come late and leave early. Even if they’re only there for 15 minutes. Obviously they should enter and leave as un-disruptively as possible, and have the forethought to sit/stand/whatever in a place and way that facilitates this. Most people are in any case very wary of entering a class or lecture late and try and be subtle about it. There’s any number of reasons a person might need to come late or leave early, and if the student hadn’t explained there reasons why, the lecturer would never have known why, so should have given the student the benefit of the doubt. For example, if I’d arrived late due to my car breaking down and I had to walk for an hour, but I was dedicated enough to the class and recognised it’s value enough to do that anyway, I’d be rather annoyed at being made to leave, both due to the effort Id made and because I valued the class and was being made to miss it. This sort of thing is why I do not support these kind of rules. What is better – that people miss the entirety of a class because they were unable to attend on time, or that they are allowed to gain some benefit from attaining part of it?
(Arriving late but within the first 15 minutes may actually be more disruptive than arriving after that because of the large number of people that do so resulting in regular interruptions, and because people are more likely to be less quiet about it because they “are only a little bit late”)
A fair number of universities have an explicit “shopping period,” at least for undergrads, where going to more classes than you intend to actually take is normal and encouraged. Inevitably some of them will meet at the same time. While it may be rude to do that at a school where it is not expected, the student could very well have come from an undergraduate school where it was normal and actually encouraged. In which case, the student could have explained and apologized in the e-mail, indicating that he meant no offense, rather than explaining and then getting all adversarial with the professor for reacting in the way he did.
The problem wasn’t that the student walked in late. A student is entitled to walk in late; the instructor is entitled to ask them to leave.
The problem is that the student appears to have absolutely no concept that they have done something which might be problematic. It wasn’t the action, it was the framing.
I.e. imagine that the student had written and said “Hi, I’m the student who came late. I’m sorry that you didn’t allow it; my experience has been that on the first day of classes, many teachers encourage partial attendance in an effort to alow students to select their class of choice. I’m still interested in finding out more about your class; can we talk?” Do you think the teacher would still have flipped out?
There are often situations where my class-management needs conflict with the situations students find themselves in. Granting the need, and I would say even the obligation, for flexibility on my part in the event of extenuating circumstances, my responsibility, ultimately, is to the class and to the class’ smooth, efficient and productive functioning, not to the needs of individual students. In the absence of an explicit college policy stipulating a class-shopping period, a student who walks into a classroom an hour late and finds it unreasonable for that the instructor asks her or him to come back the next class–and I think that is important: Galloway did not bar the student from the class–should have it called to her or his attention that the world does not revolve around his or her needs. I am not saying it is unreasonable for a student to want to shop; I am saying it is unreasonable for that student to assume the right of walking into a class, any class, an hour late without consequences. We can disagree about how Galloway handled it; I am more disturbed by what I see as the student’s sense of entitlement.
The school in question is a Graduate School of Business. Is there a B-school student in existence who doesn’t have this sense of entitlement? They’re going to be Masters of the Universe once they get out, after all.
I… I don’t understand. I agree with Robert. With Robert.
::checks for flying pigs, lead turning to gold, dogs and cats living together, etc.::
=)
Do professors who have this rule also have a rule against leaving to visit the restroom and coming back during the lecture?
That’s how I lure you in, nojojojo. Soon I’ll have you protesting high taxes and demanding harsh treatment for street crime.
I’m about to institute a partial ban on bathroom visits in one of my 25-student writing classes because of the constant transit in and out of the room. These people skip out to answer their cell phones! It’s a two hour class, for god’s sake! The sense that class is something you only show up for when you feel like it drives me up the wall.
Which is to say that I’m glad you posted this.
I am also getting the in and out class traffic from graduate students. During regular classes it was bad enough, but during a 2-day workshop, the passages in and out were almost constant, even though I provided breaks every 90 minutes or so. And this was a workshop mandated by state licensing boards, so students are legally required to be present for a specific amount of class time to get credit. I had to speak to a few people and let them know that if they kept it up, I wouldn’t be giving them credit for attendance.
This quarter, I was mortified by doing it, but I began my classes by announcing that I would take breaks around the 60-90 minute mark depending on class content, and that I expected barring a medical condition or emergency, students would otherwise remain in class.
With graduate students.
Who were very nice about it (and one mentioned to me that she has bladder issues so I encouraged her to sit near the door), but still.
The “I paid my money; give me the
educationcredentials I have purchased” mentality is highly visible among some of our students, and seems to me to be particularly bad in California compared to other states where I’ve studied and taught – it may be partly a product of the times but I also wonder if it’s the result of so many private for-profit and not-for-profit universities out here, plus the community colleges. The market seems over-saturated with less reputable institutions who really will make yourburgeruniversity experience just the way you like it as long as the checks keep coming.My two cents about the letter to the student:
1) a graduate student should have met with his/her advisor to plan a course of study, not be shopping around on the first day.
1b) in my experience, this “shopping” often involves trying to figure out whose assignments will be easiest.
2) any student at any level who did not contact me in advance to say “I’m dropping in on a couple of classes the first day; would you mind if I attended part of your class? Would you prefer I try to come at the beginning, middle, or end?” would get a rather frosty welcome from me as well.
2b) it is common practice for universities to post syllabi on their websites that students can access when registering for courses; in fact, federal law now requires that students have information about the required textbooks available to them when they sign up for a class, so it is entirely possible, even likely, that a syllabus including the professor’s classroom expectations was available for perusal before the first meeting. But we can’t be 100% sure of that; still, it’s worth noting.
3) I don’t believe in the kind of old-school humiliation techniques some professors seem to think are expected in universities (I always think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s first college class, where she’s publically dressed down by a male professor who contemptuously refers to her as “blonde girl” for daring to show up hoping she can add the class), but I believe the student’s behavior was very rude and self-centered, showed total disrespect for the professor and the other students, and suggests an attitude in need of serious adjustment.
In defense of over-entitled, snotty students, part of the phenomena in California may have to do with watching the cost of college skyrocket, even as fewer classes are offered and professors cancel a not-insignificant portion of classes due to furlough days.
I mean, it’s still not excuse to be a jerk, but if the idea is ‘you’re paying to be educated, not to be pampered,’ there’s a pretty good argument that the quality of product fell to shit at the same time as the price went up.
Now, that’s certainly not the prof’s fault in any way … they’re victims of the system too … but a certain level of frustration in students ought to be understandable.
—Myca
Total disrespect? Seriously?
The kid who yelled at me in the hallway when I told him that if he didn’t turn in his assignments, he would be getting a C-minus–that was total disrespect. The one who flipped out and told one of the other writers in her class that her story was worthless? Total disrespect.
I mean, those are both examples from undergraduate classrooms, and they really, really pissed me off. I got my boss involved and sent her emails documenting the incidents, just to insulate myself in case the students got wackier. But when we’re talking about characterizing someone walking in late as total disrespect–I don’t know. Have you guys ever taught high school?
even as fewer classes are offered and professors cancel a not-insignificant portion of classes due to furlough days.
Perhaps in the public schools, but in the private not-for-profit sector, we continue to teach 37.5% more weeks per year for 50-75% of the salary of the public schools. Cancelled classes and furloughs would almost be a relief.
And personally, I’d think even when dealing with a shortfall of classes, one would be so thrilled to have the opportunity to attend class that one would race to be there early, pencils sharpened, ready to absorb as much of that costly education as possible from the word “go.” Not slouching in halfway through and turning your nose up at assignments.
Mandolin – I expect better from college and graduate students than high school behavior. I expect them to act like young adults or adults, who can take responsibility for themselves, such as contacting a professor to say “I’m going to be late to your first class; is that OK?”
And when class meets once a week for 2.5 hours, rather than 5 times a week for 50 minutes, missing 50% of class is pretty significant, and the disruption to others cuts into an even more precious portion of their learning time as well. (A student never just slips in late like that, especially the first week. “Who are you? Are you in the right class? Did you know we started at 430? Do you have a syllabus? Where are the extra syllabi? Are you on the roster? Where is the roster?” and that’s before they start interrupting with questions that were answered before they arrived.)
Also, people make you show up for high school (in theory anyway). You’re supposed to be at college/grad school because you want to be.
Mandolin,
High school students are children. A teacher’s job there is to guide their behavior so they grow up to be well-mannered adults. (That’s something parents should do, but often don’t, so teachers usually have to.) This is why they get punishments for being tardy, etc.
College students (and especially grad students) are adults. We should be able to treat them like adults, but if they act like children, should we say nothing about it? That makes no sense to me. I don’t see why I should expect well-mannered behavior from children, but not from grown-ups.
1) I disagree that the behavior is “childlike.”
2) I think characterizing the behavior discussed in the OP as “total disrespect” is silly, and shows a lack of perspective. And makes me wonder whether people have ever had to deal with any serious disciplinary problems at all.
I think characterizing the behavior discussed in the OP as “total disrespect” is silly, and shows a lack of perspective. And makes me wonder whether people have ever had to deal with any serious disciplinary problems at all.
It does not show lack of perspective, it shows a particular perspective. At ‘Louis Pasteur’ (R.I.P ULP) where I got my undergraduate degree, it would have been shocking to see someone walk in late. It’s just not done. Not done, because it IS disrespectful.
I read ‘total disrespect’ as ‘disrespect, pure and simple’, as opposed to ‘as much disrespect as one can humanly display’.
Sebastian – yes, I agree with your clarifications.
Mandolin – thus far, in my dealings with undergraduate and graduate students, I have had students turn up drunk or high, students photographing other students and staff and putting the photos on Facebook with disparaging comments, a student developing full-blown delusional disorder and stalking an adjunct, a student who OD’ed on narcotics and accused another student of drugging and raping her, a student who emotionally abused clients during his practicum, a couple of big plagiarism incidents, boundary violations between students, staff who were gossiping about students to other students…. Not the problems of an over-crowded, under-supported urban public high school, but serious disciplinary problems that in some cases involved dismissing students or staff, and some legal involvements in some cases as well.
I still find students wandering in and out of my class to be totally disrespectful and unacceptable, and I’m shocked that I’ve actually had to say “you cannot leave class to go take a phonecall unless there is a serious emergency, and if I call a 10-minute break and you’re gone for 25 minutes, that will affect your attendance and participation grade.” I’m shocked that I have to *give* an attendance and participation grade. And that students complain about it.
At the grad school level, students are well aware that their teachers know more about the subject matter than do the students. (this holds true at lower levels, but not the awareness part as much.)
However, teachers often confuse the knowledge of a subject with the knowledge of pedagogy. Plenty of people are highly educated ina subject matter and know shit-all about teaching.
I.e. Professor X knows more about physics than I do. But he sure as heck doesn’t know more about ME. His job is to teach physics; my job is to learn physics. If I learn it better from occasional attendance and studying on my own, and if I’m not disrupting his class, then there’s really very little basis for an attendance grade.
It’s not his job to teach ethics, professionalism, or respect. First of all, he doesn’t have a PhD in those things; who’s to say he’s especially knowledgeable? Often, a professor will try to enforce their NON-speciality actions with the same force as their specialty. Er… no. And even if he was knowledgeable, that’s not the subject of the course.
Sailorman:
Well, yes and no. First, part of getting credit for a class–and sometimes for the certification, etc. that a class might lead to–is actually attending the class. Professors might choose with some validity to disregard that in some cases, but the whole point of awarding credits based on contact hours (meaning teacher-student time in the classroom) is that attendance matters. But sometimes the way a class is structured–the way I structure my classes, for example–requires attendance because assignments are built on in-class work.
Certainly, if class time is relevant then it’s appropriate to grade on it.
But c’mon: we both know that the credit hour system isn’t designed for contact, it’s designed to make money for the grad school in question. If they were looking for real contact, then they wouldn’t have any 200-person lectures, and/or they’d hire people based on their personality and teaching ability as well as on their specialized knowledge.
In the end, you’re paying for a paper that says you know something, not a paper that said you spoke to someone.
Sure: SOME profs have classes in which they convey information or insight which isn’t reasonably available anywhere else. But some other profs don’t convey a damn thing which you wouldn’t get (often faster and/or more accurately) from reading a textbook.
And I’d argue that this also has little to do with certification. If the certification requires that you know calculus, say, it makes to sense to distinguish between class time and other nonclass means of acquiring that knowledge.
Don’t get me wrong. There are some classes where attendance should be mandatory, because students will learn things you can’t learn from books. (note that this requires both that the class be in the ‘thing you can’t learn from books’ category and that the professor is capable of teaching it.) But most classes aren’t in that category.
Truly great professors will enhance the material beyond what one can learn on his or her own.
Good professors will do a great job of presenting it, and will recognize that the material takes primacy over them.
Not-so-good professors have a tendency to think they’re more important than they are, and expect that they are more valuable than the underlying material.
I’ve taken many a class in my day, and I’d venture to say that the last category is arguably the most common.
Eh my philosophy on attendance is that, after high school, it shouldn’t be mandatory. Even for labs. Here’s why: My classes are structured in a way that if you don’t attend, you most likely will do worse on assignments and tests. A student’s attendance is already reflected by their grade on these, no need to do it twice by including an attendance score. If someone doesn’t show up and gets a bad grade? They only have themself to blame (I do give fair warning). And if someone chooses to not attend and still does well? More power to ’em, they were probably advanced enough to have taken it independent study anyway (although this would be nigh impossible for labs). I find that if I’m up front about this policy, attendance is generally better and I get less whining.
Sailorman:
I am, I guess, less cynical than you are, and I’m sure that’s not only because I am a college professor. I think the relative value of the points you are making will vary widely across disciplines and perhaps even across generations.
“Eh my philosophy on attendance is that, after high school, it shouldn’t be mandatory. Even for labs.”
When the classwork *is* the work, as in a creative writing class where you’re doing workshops, then people really do need to attend on a regular basis. I suppose I could have just graded people on “did you workshop, yes/no.”
Instead I set up an attendance requirement, threatened people with it so they got the point that I wasn’t the easy A the other creative writing 101 profs were, and then ignored it. Like my favorite profs had done in college.
Then the policy was around in case there was trouble, e.g. the guy who missed five weeks and had to be told to withdraw or fail.
Oh, freshmen.
Mandolin, that’s an interesting approach I’ll have to put in my “in case I need it” file (we instructors can always learn from one another). I concede that perhaps subject matter does make a difference; I teach advanced biology topics. For labs, where classwork is the work (similar to your workshops, in a way), yes, part of the grading would be “did you do the lab?” (of course the other part is the assignment – did you do the lab correctly and did you learn the objectives etc.). So while attendance isn’t there in policy, it’s certainly required to get any credit for the work – you can’t write a lab report on a lab you haven’t done. Perhaps this works better with science than creative writing.
I’m not sure I feel the attendance policy is really the core of this – whether the student was in class or not. It was the fact the student emailed the professor in such a way that it seemed he was demanding that it was his right to enter class whenever he wanted.
I don’t think students have the right to change how a professor runs class, regardless of how good of a teacher he is or how draconian the policies are. If you don’t like it, take another class. If you can’t, stick it out. That’s currently what I’m doing in one of my classes. The reason I say this is because a professor should have autonomy over what they teach and how. It makes them better; less looking over their shoulder, less bureaucracy in the way. After all, student evaluations still get turned in. You get consistently bad evals, you need to be out or put in a retraining program for educators if you have tenure.
The places that I’ve seen (local elementary schools, high schools, etc.) where the professor/teacher was not the one writing the lesson plans or scheduling class time were the worst classes I’ve been in, both learning and morale-wise. In fact, my current class might be a case of that – apparently there is a pretty hands-on department chair who is dictating the assignments.
As Sailorman pointed out, there will always be luke-warm teachers who you could just as easily learn from a book as be in class. The reason why those teachers, and all teachers, should be free to dictate their class policies is so that you can have those experiences with the medium to good ones that really make your education.
Sailorman:
Certainly, if class time is relevant then it’s appropriate to grade on it.
But c’mon: we both know that the credit hour system isn’t designed for contact, it’s designed to make money for the grad school in question.
I am teaching future mental health professionals. While the reading and research I assign are key to learning the concepts I’m teaching, the in-class discussion, exercises, interactions with peers, difficult dialogues, role-plays, and personal growth opportunities are such a significant part of what a student is meant to learn that we are actively fighting the “move classes online” pull from the market because you cannot assess a student’s fitness for this field or teach them the skills needed for the job through a computer screen.
When students miss my classes, they miss learning opportunities and deny their peers learning opportunities as well.
(this is another Sebastian)
I don’t see why this is an either/or.
Galloway was perfectly within his rights to ask this student to leave, but frankly I think the student had a perfectly good point about sampling.
Tuition at NYU for undergrads is about $32,000 per year. I assume (though couldn’t locate the amount) that the graduate program is at least as much and probably more.
Unless the class was strongly disrupted, perhaps she walked in front of many people to sit in the front, I don’t see why anything other than stating his policy was necessary.
His email response strikes me more of leveraging the power difference between teacher and student for his own sadistic pleasure than anything else particularly appropriate. And publishing it generally only serves to confirm that suspicion. Now the fact that power gets leveraged against the weak is something that people need to learn. But I don’t think we have to applaud this particular method.