http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/14/california_davis_investigates_e_mail_about_student_who_gave_birth

How Not to Deal With a Student Mother

January 14, 2011

The chancellor of the University of California at Davis is pledging an investigation and "swift and appropriate action" over an e-mail in which a class was polled on the grade that should be given to a student who had to miss some quizzes because she had given birth.

"I take very seriously any allegations that a student’s welfare, dignity or academic rights have in any way been compromised. And as a woman, who has experienced firsthand the challenges of melding academic and family life and has experienced discrimination, I am especially sensitive to this issue," said an e-mail message that Linda P.B. Katehi, chancellor at Davis, provided to Inside Higher Ed last night and that she planned to send to all the students who complained to her on Thursday.

 

"This alleged action, if found to be true, would present a serious deviation from the values and principles that guide our campus and our School of Veterinary Medicine, and I would be profoundly disappointed if the reported events did in fact transpire on this campus."

Katehi stressed that UC Davis and its veterinary school (at which 85 percent of students are female) in fact has ways of helping students who become mothers. "During a student’s pregnancy, the school customarily works with her to help catch up after being away for childbirth or to arrange for an extended leave after which she can resume her academic program. And for mothers of infants, the school provides a lactation room so that students can continue breastfeeding their babies," Katehi said.
The professor who is alleged to have handled the class in this way is Edward C. Feldman, chair of the veterinary college's medicine and epidemiology department. Reached by phone on Thursday and told that his handling of the situation had been of concern to many students, Feldman said, "I don't care what people say. It is between me, my students and my school."
Asked if he wanted to explain why he would use a student poll to grade a student who had just given birth, he said, "No comment."

Davis officials confirmed the authenticity of an e-mail that was first quoted on the blog "On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess," by a female scientist at a major research university who blogs, as "Isis," about issues in academic science, particularly for women.
The e-mail was sent by the presidents of the third-year class to its members and reads as follows (in italics):
Dear Colleagues,
One of our classmates recently gave birth and will be out of class for an unknown period of time. This means she will undoubtedly miss one, or more, or all quizzes in VMD 444. Dr. Feldman is not sure how to handle this and has requested the class give input and vote. He has provided us with 6 options on which to vote and is open to any other ideas you may have. Most likely a CERE poll will be up next week and a voting will close no later than Wednesday. If you have other suggestions please email them to Dan or I ASAP. We will alert you to the opening of voting. Below are listed the options that Dr. Feldman has suggested. Please reserve comment on these options and provide us your opinion on them by voting when the time comes. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.
a) automatic A final grade
b) automatic B final grade
c) automatic C final grade
d) graded the same as everyone else: best 6 quiz scores out of a possible 7 quiz scores (each quiz only given only once in class with no repeats)
e) just take a % of quiz scores (for example: your classmate takes 4 quizzes, averages 9/10 points = 90% = A)
f) give that student a single final exam at the end of the quarter (however this option is only available to this one student, all others are graded on the best 6 quiz scores and the % that results)
Please let us know if you have other thoughts on how to handle this situation and please keep your eye out for the upcoming vote.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Your Presidents

The presidents of the class did not respond to e-mail messages from Inside Higher Ed seeking their comment. Isis blogged that after the e-mail was forwarded to her, she contacted Feldman, who she said responded with an e-mail saying: "I have no comment on the e-mail you received which was to be sent only to members of the UC Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine, current 3rd year class."
The readers of Isis's blog have raised a variety of criticisms of the e-mail sent to students, ranging from fairness issues, to the rights of new mothers to have reasonable methods offered for them to complete coursework, to potential privacy violations.

Isis wrote: "My heart breaks for this woman to have been shamed in front of her peers this way. To have been presented as a problem that must be voted on and dealt with. I can't imagine what she must have felt like to know that her peers were given the option to assign her an 'A' or a 'C,' depending on what they thought she deserved. How are her peers in any position to determine her performance in a course in which they have no expertise?"

— Scott Jaschik

Poster campaign on TV

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Canada/Edmonton/ID=1320501528

Posters continued . . .

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2009/11/05/edmonton-university-posters.html

Student won't be punished for satirical posters

Last Updated: Thursday, November 5, 2009 | 12:42 PM MT Comments5Recommend11

CBC News

A University of Alberta student whose satirical posters had him facing probation or expulsion learned Wednesday he won't be punished after all.

Derek Warwick, a fourth-year women's studies student, said the posters were supposed to be a humorous way to get people talking about comments from the university president about a decline in male enrolment.

University of Alberta student Derek Warwick says a misunderstanding led campus security to tell him he had violated the student code of conduct by putting up posters that poked fun at comments made by the university president. (CBC)The posters carry slogans like "Only white men can save our university" and "Women are attacking campus."

"Our posters were in no way hateful or malicious," Warwick said. "I think that we were again using humour to create dialogue, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that."

Warwick said he was called to the security office at the university and told he was being charged with the distribution of malicious material under the Code of Student Behavior and that he could be put on probation or expelled over the incident.

"We were told that there had been complaints about the posters that had been put up — that some people had interpreted them as being sexist," he said.

"I think there are very few people who would agree with campus security's decision to press charges."

'Clever and creative'

"I thought the posters were clever; I thought they were creative," said University President Indira Samarasekera.

She said the discipline threatened by security did not come at the instigation of her office.

One of the satirical posters that got student Warwick into hot water. (CBC)"I was flattered that somebody actually read what I said in the newspapers," Samarasekera said. "So, I thought, that's what the university's all about, expression of people's ideas and opinions. I didn't find them a problem at all."

Samarasekera's comments referred to the decline in the proportion of male students at universities across Canada. She says she stands by those remarks.

"They were based on emerging facts," Samarasekera said. "If you look at the last 15 years, for example, there has been a much more significant growth of women attending university relative to men.

"Society needs the best of both genders to develop passions for a particular area and to come into a university and contribute."

The Now Famous Poster Campaign

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2009/11/02/edmonton-samarasekera-white-male.html?ref=rss&loomia_si=t0:a16:g2:r5:c0.043861:b28727449

Posters take swipe at U of A president

Last Updated: Monday, November 2, 2009 | 11:34 AM MT Comments41Recommend25

CBC News

A satirical poster campaign has sprung up on the University of Alberta campus in reaction to comments made by the president, Indira Samarasekera, about the issue of attracting more men to universities.

About 400 posters were put up. One states: "Only White Men Can Save our University!" Another reads: "Women: Stop! Drop! Men: Enroll."

This is one of the posters that was put up at the University of Alberta last week by a group of students protesting comments made by university president Indira Samarasekera. (Tina Faiz/CBC)

The posters are in response to comments made by Samarasekera in an interview on Oct. 21, when she said: "Presidents of the major universities are very concerned we are not attracting young men in the numbers we should."

"I'm going to be an advocate for young white men, because I can be. No one is going to question me when I say we have a problem," she said.

Samarasekera made the comments in response to new statistics that show females make up about 58 per cent of the student body in Canada.

Samarasekera said her concern is that in 20 years, there will not be enough male talent at the heads of companies and elsewhere.

Men can be their own advocates

Derek Warwick, a women's studies major, spearheaded the poster campaign to protest Samarasekera's assertion that young white men need help.

"They don't need advocates, they can be their own advocates, it's a white man's world," he said Monday.

"White men are the most privileged group in the world, if we say they have problems then, well, other groups in the world have a whole heck of a lot more problems." Warwick said.

"Women CEOs aren't the issue ... because women are facing a plethora of other issues such as sexual harassment in the workplace. They're not making as much money as men ... those are the issues we should be looking at," he said.

Agricultural student Carly Huvenaares thinks Samarasekera has a point.

'Women had to work that much harder to get up to those positions, and to say that now it's a trend towards more women, I feel that's a good thing.'— Mehek Mather, student

"In our classes there's about 10 girls and one guy," she said.

There are also many scholarships available only to females, Huvenaares said.

Dietetic intern Mehek Mather views the comments as a throwback to the times when women were rarely seen on university campuses.

"Women had to work that much harder to get up to those positions, and to say that now it's a trend towards more women, I feel that's a good thing," she said.

If the university president feels the need to advocate for someone it should be women and people of colour, Warwick said.

Samarasekera was not available to comment on the poster campaign.

Are Female Students 'a Perk of the Job'?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2009/sep/23/kealey-female-students-perk

Are female students 'a perk of the job'?

A vice-chancellor is encouraging lecturers to enjoy gazing at, even fantasising about, attractive female students

Terence Kealey: 'Look but don't touch'. Photograph: Martin Argles

We've had a week of sex scandals in schools. Now Terence Kealey, vice-chancellor of Buckingham University, seems intent on stirring things up on the academic front.

Female students, he declares, are a perk of the job for male university lecturers – though they should look, not touch.

In an article for the Times Higher Education magazine on lust, part of a feature on the seven deadly sins of universities, Kealey wrote: "Normal girls – more interested in abs than in labs, more interested in pecs than specs, more interested in triceps than tripos – will abjure their lecturers for the company of their peers, but nonetheless, most male lecturers know that, most years, there will be a girl in class who flashes her admiration and who asks for advice on her essays. What to do?

"Enjoy her! She's a perk."

Flashing a few literary allusions, he continued: "She doesn't yet know that you are only Casaubon to her Dorothea, Howard Kirk to her Felicity Phee, and she will flaunt you her curves. Which you should admire daily to spice up your sex, nightly, with the wife."

Displaying a more surprising familiarity with the etiquette at lapdancing clubs, Kealey added: "As in Stringfellows, you should look but not touch."

The magazine's academic readers were outraged, including otototototoi who wrote: "I'm amazed that Terence K has a position in any university, and I'll be damn sure never to apply for a job at Buckingham. Why did the THE print this awful, ugly nonsense?"

Kealey, who has been vice-chancellor at Buckingham, the country's only independent university, for eight years, said it was a myth that an affair between student and lecturer was an abuse of power, saying accountability has meant that "the days are gone when a scholar could trade sex for upgrades".

But he added that some female students still fantasised about their lecturers.

Kealey's comments were attacked by Olivia Bailey, women's officer at the National Union of Students.

She told the Telegraph: "I am appalled that a university vice-chancellor should display such an astounding lack of respect for women.

"Regardless of whether this was an attempt at humour, it is completely unacceptable for someone in Terence Kealey's position to compare a lecture theatre to a lapdancing club, and I expect that many women studying at Buckingham University will be feeling extremely angry and insulted at these comments."

Should Kealey be allowed to have his fun? Or has he badly misjudged how students and staff feel about this issue?