Amy Bishop, Christopher Dorner personality and false accusation

[JackN415]

Last edited Tue Jun 4, 2013, 09:36 PM - Edit history (4)

This is purely a personal story and is never meant to be used anecdotally to construe as something more significant than the simple story itself.

A dear friend of mine is a college professor. She received a shocking notice of allegations against her by one of her students who received a less-than-optimal grade from her. The student, who also happens to be a minority, sent an e-mail to the dept chair, and threatened to bring the matter to a student association that represents the interest of minority students.

The most serious charge, besides typical "sour-grape" charges such as being a bad professor, disorganized, etc. is that she has a personal bias against him, possibly because of his race, and unfairly gave him a bad grade because of it.

The student's e-mail was quite heavy and serious to the point that the dept chair, who knew her too well to give any weight to such charges, asked her to delay her planned travel to address the issue, out of his concern that this kind of thing has a way to become bigger and "badder" (sic) than expected.

She had a coordinated meeting with the student to review his grade in the presence of another faculty who represents the dean of UG education (which was probably good for her safety as well). She went through in complete details each and every homework, quiz, and exam that the student did, showing how they were scored, and compared with the class average.

She showed the record of the student missing quizzes, of being habitually late in homework submission, of her e-mail imploring him not to be late again. It became clear that she was compassionate for him that she gave him partial credits for several late submissions that, according to the written course policy, should not have been counted.

The total score for the student, even with her leniency should have earned him an F in most courses. Yet, she bent the curve so badly that he had a decent passing grade.

The matter was settled and the student no longer complained. He accepted the result.

What is so disheartening about this is how a bad student like him, who was in a special program designed to make sure he gets in college and graduate, can be such a bully, frivolously abuse the system, play the race card, and incur inconvenience and burden on people like her who actually go out of their way to help him.

Talking about biting the hand that helps you. He bullies without consequence. In older time, such a student can be dismissed from a university for that type of conduct.

Frankly, after I saw his work in the course,* I think she (and perhaps many other instructors, including myself in the past) did a disservice to him and society by pushing him along and giving him a degree. Yes, he will graduate and earn his BS degree. It will be a success story of a disadvantaged minority who makes it through to become a professional.

I am sure there are many, and have personally seen many well-deserved students who work hard and come through in spite of life adversity and disadvantages. Yet, perhaps for every 100 decent kids, there may be one like this guy, whose attitude and manner - I joked to her - suggests he should have studied to become a prosecutor (based on the way he levied charges against her), or a political activist rather than a science/engineering professional.

Again. This is only about a single individual. But if he had not played the race card, I would not think the dept chair would have had to intervene (covering his behind so as not be viewed as insensitive to minority students), making a small matter such as a grade review into an affair with the involvement of the dean of UG etc. She had to delay her trip, spent a whole day until 2 AM to prepare her documentation.

BTW, she is also a liberal democrat.

-------------------------------------------------------
*Per FERPA, I was allowed see his work at her request as a member of the review process. But she waived the need for me to be present at the meeting because we all knew that the UG dean representative was sufficient.

============ Final notes ================
This is added on 6/4 with new insight about the case.

1- The objectionable expression "race card" is removed from the title and please ignore it elsewhere. This OP wasn't aware of the derogatory nature of it and regrets if any one offended by it.

2- This is about problematic personality (mental case) such as Amy Bishop & Christopher Dorner who had distorted perception of reality and rationalized their failure by blaming others. This is a mental illness that has nothing to do with race.

3- For Dorner, there is a recent article about his case: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/04/dorner-firing-justified-review-finds/2390125/

(Civil rights attorney Connie) Rice, a longtime department watchdog and frequent critic, was allowed to review the findings.

"The firing was justified and his allegations are completely unfounded," said Rice, who spent two weeks reviewing the findings. "This guy needed to go. And the question was, even if he needed to go, did the LAPD get rid of him in a way that was illegitimate? And the answer for me was no."

Dorner claimed he was let go because he was black. My cheer to Ms. Connie Rice for having the courage to call it as it is. This guy is a mental case, a walking time bomb who used his race to rationalize his behavior.

4- Had Ms Amy Bishop had some sort of attribute, such as lesbian, she might have accused her dept for denying her tenure because of her sexual orientation.

The point is these mental cases look for justification for their sociopath actions.

It dawned on me that the student in this case bears an attitude that is strikingly similar to what reported about C. Dorner. This student hasn't exploded yet and I hope I won't read about him in the news some day.

[SheilaT]

1. While this student may well have been playing the race card,

far too often students simply bully college instructors into giving them better grades than they deserve. And you're right, that this school has done this student no favor by little him get the degree, especially if he did as poorly in other courses.

[JackN415]

2. yes, you are right. If he didn't make an allusion to race, the whole thing...

would be just a simple discussion between an instructor and a student. But this guy really abuses the system.

[JackN415]

3. Update:

He had a record of being aggressive according to other faculties who had him, although he didn't play the race card the last time.

One said that he came in one time, talked about dropping the course, being pushy and almost said that he didn't do well because the professor didn't know how to teach! Typical "blaming-the-professor" mentality. He acted as if it would be entirely the professor's fault if he had to drop it.

The instructor thinks he got his way for being like this too often and it becomes a habit. People may feel he is a time bomb and just pass him along.

[knitter4democracy]

4. Speaking as a high school teacher, it isn't about race.

It's about the grade.

I've been through that before when students have gotten grades lower than they'd hoped or expected (often unrealistic expectations, but I digress), and it's been with kids saying I'm racist, sexist, a bad teacher, crazy and out of control, and more. There's never any proof for it and often quite a bit of proof that it's anything but that. If they can prove that their low grade isn't their fault, then they get to get the grade they want, right?

[JackN415]

5. Yes, of course it is about grade. Manipulative students use...

whatever weapons available to them to bully teachers.

Abusive acts of some students such as false accusations of racism, sexism are insults to those who truly suffer in real cases.

[noiretextatique]

6. you lost me at "playing the race card"

it's a really stupid term invented by rw assholes. just about anything (like the truth of what happened) is better than that dimissive term.

[JackN415]

7. what would be a better term? can you suggest? I sincerely don't know

I certainly don't want to use terms that become derogative. "Abusing racial charge"?

[noiretextatique]

10. i think it would be better to just state what happened

without using language that has been co-opted by the right.

[JackN415]

9. Just to let you know, "Accusation of academic bias involving race" was the official...

expression used in a discussion memo of the case.

Sorry if you feel bad about the expression "race card", I didn't know that it was offensive since I never used it before.

All I hope is all of us work to promote racial fairness, and a part of that is to fight against false racial accusation as well. We all know that victims of racial discrimination suffer badly. Let's also be aware that victims of false accusation of racial bias, (or for that matter, false accusation of anything) are also hurt.

I would not make any assumption of your race based on the interest of this matter. But let me ask this. Assume that the student's race (never mentioned in my post) be not yours, would you condemn false racial accusation?

[noiretextatique]

11. yes, i would condemn a false accusation

but since i am african-american, i've found the "race-card" meme to be used a lot by people i detest, who will call just about everything race-related "the race card". and just so you know: i am not talking about you.
but i've seen that phrase when discussing the trayvon martin murder case with rw nitwits.

[JackN415]

8. This is a reply to Starry Messenger who posted the below message

Last edited Fri May 31, 2013, 05:40 PM - Edit history (1)

Poster Starry Messenger wrote:

I do find the repeated use of the term "race card" offensive and with you'd use something else. But this whole story seems really elaborate and I don't know what it has to do with schools or learning, except you don't like what this kid did.

White students get away with outrageous shit. Believe me. They use their race to their advantage constantly. To see a DUer harping on one kid who happened to be black who doesn't get to tell his side of the story here really bothers me.

I'm sorry that you feel offensive. Let's remove that term "race card" for now. But please think about this:
- where in my original post it specifies "white" or "black" as the race of the student?
- to be as unbiased as possible, I recommend you read the post with the assumption that the student's race be NOT yours, or any race that you have a strong feeling about. Please assume the student's race be what you are most neutral about. (e. g. south asian, chinese/east asian, pacific islander, hispanic, caucasian,.. yes, caucasian would be a racial minority in other countries such as, say China)

I hope you will see that this post is a lesson for those involved in the education business (professors, teachers, and students) to be aware of it, and for those who care about racial bias to be aware of the potential abuse.

By actively involving, educating others on curbing the abuse of racial allegation, it will make the environment such as this university a better education place for everyone.

Lastly, you mentioned I "don't like what this kid did." Just to let you know that I had no direct interaction with him (thanks god), except for being asked to review all his work and read his allegation. Even if I were of his race, a mental case is a mental case and I would call him a mental case.

What he did hurt my colleague's feeling and disturbed her substantially even after her trip that involved vacation (she said she couldn't get it out of her mind). It has unjust consequence to people's life. Are you defending him for what he did to her just because of your assumption that he were "black"?

Please read my post again to see how I have made clear that this kid's race has nothing to do with him being a bully. But it is bad that he used "race" as a ploy. If any of us cares about improving racial equality, we must be fair and racially neutral ourselves. We don't disparage the victim and defend the perpetrator just because the perpetrator is a member of our race and the victim is a member of other races.

Again, I wish to remove any term offensive to you and apologize. It is not intended. I only ask you to look at this case on its own merit. Let's assume the student be Asian and if you are not interested in calling out against the abuse of false racial accusation, then just forget it and I wish you peace.

[Starry Messenger]

12. I'm not defending what he allegedly did, I said he didn't get to tell his side on DU.

His putative race does not really matter for my dislike of the term "race card", no you did not specify, but it is usually African-Americans who get that term used in discussions of race. However, if he is of a different race, all the rest of my post is still my feeling on the matter.

I myself have been involved in a case similar to this, and in no way did I feel like the student did not have the right to have his concerns answered, no matter what I might think of the circumstances. We work at institutions that have rules to prevent discrimination and students have a right see that they are enforced.

Were my feelings hurt, my time used in a way that I didn't foresee? Sure, but that's part of the job. It was also found to be untrue in my case, and I don't now feel like I need to document my every interaction with students of a different race as a result of the instance.

I also find "mental case" to be an objectionable term and hope it isn't a term you use in the classroom. I find part of being neutral as a classroom teacher is to not use loaded terms about people's characteristics and it's part of the code of the institution that employs me.

I do not believe that there is such an outbreak of accusations of racial bias by non-white students in universities that this needs to be discussed and warned against at length.

That is all that I have to say on this topic.

[JackN415]

13. you might have suffered too much from your experience that prevents you from...

see the fundamental principle of fairness, like John Rawls' Theory of Justice.

But there is such a significant difference between your perspective and mine that it is best to leave the matter as it is because I don't see we are converging on how to deal with this problem, which is NOT racism but the abuse of the system designed to promote racial equality.

You wrote:

Were my feelings hurt, my time used in a way that I didn't foresee? Sure, but that's part of the job.

I simply refuse to accept this as a part of my job.

I will close this thread with the final update of the situation. An adhoc committee assigned to review the case has come up with a recommendation. According to this rec., the dept chair jumped the gun in calling for the meeting. The student's allegation would have been dismissed and this whole thing would have been a non-story.

I will use an analogy. If an employee of a company feels that his/her salary is low because of racial discrimination, how does one prove it? There are plenty of legal precedences, and basically it requires the establishments of two evidences:

1- his/her salary in comparison with those of other employees who perform the same job function with similar seniority/rank, job performance score or rating etc. Let's denote these employees as equivalent employees (EE).
.
2-Evidence that shows his/her salary is lower than those of EE of a different race.

Based on this criterion of 2 evidences, the student would not pass the 1st stage, because the instructor clearly showed how his scores were graded compared with the rest of the class, and why they were so low, consistently at or near the bottom of the class.

The dept chair erred in failing to require the student to acquire the evidence of Step #1, and to present evidence of Step #2 before accepting his allegation of racial bias and initiating action.

There would have been no need for a special meeting, no need for the instructor to cancel her travel plan. Nothing is urgent. They can schedule a meeting after her trip, as grades can be changed months after a semester is over.

Just a simple 30-min meeting between the student and the instructor would be sufficient for the student to have all the information needed to know why his scores are what they are. He would see what other students did (anonymously) and why they had higher scores than he did.

Indeed, the adhoc committee concluded that if the recommended procedure had been followed, there would have been no ground whatsoever for the student to make any credible allegation of bias of any type, be that race, sexual orientation, personality or whatever. Poor work get poor scores, pure and simple. This thread would not exist.

To appreciate this principle, think of an antithetical analogy in which some cops simply arrest a minority person without first obtaining evidence or establishing a probable cause for the arrest. I surmise you would be on the opposite side of the cops in this case and demand for evidence.

About your response

I do not believe that there is such an outbreak of accusations of racial bias by non-white students in universities that this needs to be discussed and warned against at length.

, let's rephrase this way:

I do not believe that there is such an outbreak of

non-black neighborhood crime-watch captains killed black kids carrying marijuana

that

case like Trayvon Martin

needs to be discussed and warned against at length.

Lastly, I will not get into the issue of ingenuousness of your response that you would have the same consideration if the student were of another race such as Asian, given your earlier emotional response based on your earlier conjecture of the student race as being "black."

In order to fight racism, one must have the enlightenment and courage to rise above one own's experience- regardless how painful, to stand for justice when the abuse and wrong is perpetrated in reverse. To justify or even attempting to defend a case like this is to insult the true victims and invalidate the moral high ground of one's own experience.

BTW, I called this kid a mental case, my colleague called him a time bomb and was fearful of him exploding on him once.

[HiPointDem]

16. of course it's part of the job. teachers work with all kinds of people, from all kinds of

backgrounds, with all kinds of points of view.

it's your opinion the kid was a 'bully'. that may be, but it may also be that he thought he was the victim.

reviewing the reasons he received the grade he did in response to his concerns was a good way to handle it, and apparently it satisfied him.

as for the 'mental case' stuff: of course there *are* 'mental cases,' but there's also the case of teachers or admin labeling dissatisfied students 'mental cases' because they don't like them or find them troublesome, or misunderstand their behavior.

i have a personal anecdote too: i was teaching at a community college, english remedial classes. i had a student, he was kind of a screw-up (slept during class, didn't do the homework, etc.). he did the same in everyone's class, i was friendly with him & just kept reminding him he was screwing up & would fail if he didn't shape up; eventually he did (when he realized i was serious). the other thing was that there were some differences in the education system that may have played into his lackadaisical attitude.

another teacher took it personally, her veiled hostility made *him* more hostile so it got worse. at a teachers' meeting she declared he had a mental problem and needed a referral for psychological evaluation. omg. the other faculty didn't feel the same, so that went nowhere, thankfully, but it could have since she was also an administrator in the department, and it would have had bad results.

she was one of those super-sweet butter wouldn't melt types (until you crossed her, lol). some students love that type and she did great with those students. some students hate that type, and this kid was one of them. just personalities, but she wasn't used to not being loved, so she decided it was a mental problem.

[JackN415]

17. Thanks for your perspective, but

the case is closed and if you review my post #13 above, what happened is really simple:

- The student should have asked for a grade review without a strongly worded, emotionally charged, blustery allegation of racial bias. Grade review happens all the time. Every class, at the end of a semester, unless every one gets A, there will be some coming in asking why they don't get what they expected. Every instructor encounters this all the time. Yes, this is a part of the job.

- But he didn't do what most students do. He first asked her for a review the day before her trip. She replied that she would be back in 12 days and they can meet to do the review. He immediately wrote a direct e-mail to the dept chair with the race aspect. (The guy was simply cunning. He knew that mentioning race would get a faster response, otherwise, the chair would have told him to wait also. It's no big deal to wait a couple weeks. Grade changes can be made several months after a semester.)

- Because of the word "race", the dept chair was chickened and immediately made it into a serious affair with memos calling for formal meetings, etc. making her delaying her trip.

- The result of the special meeting was that the student accepted and was probably even happy about his grade, knowing that he got a much better grade than an F, thanks to a very kind instructor who didn't have the heart to flunk the lowest-score student in the class.

- An ad hoc committee formed after the fact made a recommendation how cases like this can be handled in the future. The recommendation implies that the special meeting called by the chair was premature. What he should have done was:
i) reply to the student that he should see the instructor and obtain a review of his grade to establish facts of the case (which the instructor said they would do after she gets back);
ii) ask the student to cite evidence of bias or unfairness based on facts of the case;
iii) if there was evidence of bias, and only then, a special meeting should be called to consider if the bias is race related.

As mentioned, if this had happened, this thread wouldn't exist. There was no fact to establish that his grade was the result of bias of any kind much less the racial kind.

When the work is demonstrably the worst in the class, what bias can it be? I was the person asked to review his work independently, and I was amazed that he did something no other student could have done: he managed to be wrong on every single answer of an assignment. Even a broken clock manages to be correct twice a day, but this guy managed to be wrong in all questions including trivial gimmes that many instructors often put in an assignment to prevent perfect 0. Yet, this guy did it as if he intended to make a parody. Not only that, his errors were beyond "0". It should have been in the negative territory. It's like asking "how much does it cost to buy 12 oranges, if each orange is 15 cents", and he answered "5 apples."

I will not get into the discussion of the use of expression "mental case" or "bully", it's a personal choice. You should read my earlier post about how he almost exploded on another instructor who was scared of him. More than one instructors call him a walking time bomb.

That's all the facts of the case.

What I tried to accomplish in this thread is this:

- a suggestion of procedure (as described above) how to handle cases like this in the future, which, I am sure now that most other institutions must have it, including the one in this case. It was the dept chair who didn't know the existing guidelines and acted incorrectly, using his power to ask the instructor to delay her trip. In my opinion, he was a politician, knowing that the student was one of the officers of a minority student association.

- to simply share a story about how false racial bias allegation can hurt people and the cause of anti-racism as well. It is one thing to make a charge on good faith and based on facts. It is another thing to manipulate the system and make allegation without facts and evidence.

The student was politically smart (to make up for his deficiency in science/engineering) and probably couldn't stomach the gnawing feeling of having a "bad grade" for 2 weeks waiting for the instructor to return. He did what he could exploit, playing the race story (I avoid the expression "race card&quot to get a faster response. It's like someone yelling fire in a theater so that people run out in order for him to select the best seat.

BTW, No, it is not a part of the job to be yanked around when someone abuses the system I would not be if I were in her case.

[HiPointDem]

18. look, you want to argue about the minutia of this case, go somewhere else & do it.

it is indeed part of the job to deal with all students' concerns, even those whom *you* feel are abusing the system.

[JackN415]

19. Thanks for your open-mindedness. Do you own DU?

[JackN415]

14. I'm not defending what he allegedly did, I said he didn't get to tell his side on DU.

I'm not defending what he allegedly did, I said he didn't get to tell his side on DU.

I'm not defending what

George Zimmerman

allegedly did, I said he didn't get to tell his side

to the public.

George Zimmerman will be judged by a court of law, not a court of public opinion

This student was judged by a committee vested with the power to decide on his academic performance, the telling

his side on DU

is totally irrelevant.

The result was in. The student allegation was dismissed.

I don't think I can ever work with you on promoting racial equality.

[Starry Messenger]

15. I refer you again to the last line of my post.