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Rethinking
Faced with nationwide criticism and the news that UCLA will consider any student who sells course materials to him to be in violation of university policy, UCLAProfs.com mastermind Andrew Jones has pulled the plug on the spy-for-hire plan he devised to encourage students to report their leftist professors' classroom behavior to him.
In a letter issued Sunday, Jones announced that he was suspending his offer to pay students fees ranging from $100 to $10 for course materials. But this does not mean that he has seen the tactical and ethical error of his ways--it just means he wants to establish himself on firmer legal ground before he moves ahead. Jones' letter also announces that the Bruin Alumni Association has obtained legal representation to help fight UCLA on this; he also makes it clear that students are still "encourage[d] ... to consult with the BAA (anonymously if necessary) for advice in reporting, documenting, and publicizing abusive professor behavior in past or current classes."
Alumni should be concerned about the quality and character of education offered at their former schools. But they should also be careful about how they gather their information, and about what sorts of actions they take to protest pedagogical practices that strike them as wrong. Jones' enterprise is a fine example of how not to do it. As the spate of recent resignations from the Bruin Alumni Association attests, the tactics he has adopted are more likely to damage his cause than to forward it.
Posted by acta online at January 24, 2006 08:03 AM
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Comments
Although I can sympathyze with any student forced to sit through an agitprop session disguised as a scholarly exercise, surely this was an act of madness.
Posted by: Douglas Hainline at January 25, 2006 12:07 PM