Professor to Student: "F*** off!"

So, this semester wasn’t bad, save for one little experience in my CECS 122 class.

This class, like many others, was taught not by the professor, by by two TA’s. One TA handled the lab sessions with another handling the lectures. Homework was assigned online, via Blackboard. Now, Blackboard is a pretty crummy system when it’s used properly, but even worse when its not. The situation went like this:

Homeworks 4 and 5 were posted at the same time, but upon closer inspection, they were the same assignment. On top of that, they both had the same due date of almost six months ago. Obviously, the TA had accidentally uploaded an old assignment from a previous semester rather than the more recent assignment. So, the next class period, I made a point of asking about it. I received a curt, “OK,” in response, and assumed that he’d take care of it. SO, over the next couple of days, I periodically checked homework number four online, but it never changed. During the next class meeting, I asked again, and got a similar response.

Then one day, I heard from a classmate that homework five had been updated and was already due. I was a bit pissed, but didn’t worry too much. I assumed that they were trying to stay on track, but an announcement in class would have been nice so I’d have known to watch the correct assignment. To my knowledge, at least a few students (out of perhaps twenty) missed homework 5 because, like me, they expected 4 to be updated first.

After this debacle, I continued watching the site for updates, and homeworks 6 and 7 were posted; lo and behold, both had incorrect due dates. Even more surprising was that homework 4 was updated and given a due date, after 5 was already due, again with no announcement in class. A similar situation ensued with homeworks 6 and 7, and by now, more than a few people were complaining about how the class was being handled.

Then came Thanksgiving break. On Tuesday, I didn’t make it to class because I was busy packing so I would be ready when my family picked me up later that afternoon. In my defense, it was the only class meeting that I missed the entire semester. During that class period, the professor visited the class for the first time that semester, and said that anyone could turn in the late assignments that day. The professor also sent out an email to that effect to the students in the class. Now, this was a decent attempt at solving the problem, but a one day deadline to finish several homework assignments was sort of extreme. Of course, it becomes much worse if, like me, you missed the announcement. As for the email, here’s a screenshot of my school inbox:

It’s all spam.  Of course, the school practically requires students to use the web interface for mail, and offers no spam protection whatsoever. (Apparently, with some tinkering, it can be made to work with an external mail reader, but I found no documentation on Louisville’s webpage.) So, as it wound up, again I didn’t know we had a chance to turn in the late homework assignments until it was too late.

Now, I’m not an idiot when it comes to programming, so the homework itself wasn’t much of a problem, and I worked through most of it anyways. The problem was that homework made up 50% of our grade in the class, so even missing three assignments put me at risk of failing. So, after I had worked through a fair chunk of the work, I contacted my professor via email:

Dr. ——–,

I am enrolled in the CECS 122 class which had the problem with homework. I
was not in class on the day this announcement was made, which was the first
class I have missed this semester, and due to the high amount of spam in my
netmail account I did not see this email for some time.

I have recently begun work on some of the assignments in CECS 122, and will
be turning them in as I can finish them. I hope you will accept these
assignments even though they are a bit late.

If you like, I can meet with you sometime this week to discuss the homework
situation. I have a fairly good understanding of C and C++, both from
courses here and my programming experience outside of school, and I feel my
time would be wasted if I had to repeat this course again in the Spring
semester. I am free all day on Wednesday the 6th, and will be free after
noon on Thursday and Friday.

I am CCing this email to my primary email account. If you reply, please
reply to that account as well so that I will get your email without having
to sort through the spam on my netmail account again.

Thank you for your time,

Zach Tibbitts

After sending this email, I watched my primary email account for a response, but none came for three days. Then, I finally checked my school netmail account, and after a bit of sifting, there was his response.

I receive tons of spam too and I manage reading all my e-mails. As a matter
of fact I salvaged this message from my junk-e-mail folder. It is your
responsibility to keep up with your work, attend class, read your e-mail,
and submit your home work on time. A previous knowledge being actual or
perceived is not a basis for awarding you a grade in the course. One of the
bases for awarding the grade is fulfilling all requirements. It may not be a
perfect system but it is the only one that allows me to judge all students
fairly.
I do not see any use of us meeting if all you want to do is go over these
issues. I will be more than happy to meet with you if you have C++
questions.
Dr. ——-

First off, I was a bit surprised that he outright refused to respond to the email address I requested, as I’ve never had a professor complain or even question a request for a different contact address. I would have been satisfied with a simple “I do not accept late homework, period,” except that wasn’t even the case, as he had made one exception already. What bothered we was the manner in which he replied. I’m not necessarily saying he was trying to come across as cruel, but I don’t think he could have come across as a bigger asshole if he tried. I somewhat doubt that a spam filter would reject a simple text based email from a school email address for starters (and I’d like to know how he has spam filtering at all, I sure don’t have access to it), as for attending class, I did. Even though I had very little reason to, as I knew most of this content before the class even began, I attended and stayed for every single class meeting, save for one, and missing one class meeting certainly shouldn’t be merit for potentially failing a course. Especially when we had absolutely no forewarning that that meeting would bear any significance. I also didn’t appreciate the somewhat arrogant implication that I didn’t have an actual understanding of C++. It’s my opinion that both myself, and I’m sure many students with enough interest in programming to enroll in a Computer Science class already have enough understanding to pass an Intro to C++ class.

I wanted to shoot back a particularly nasty email, point out that he said I have a responsibility to attend class while he never showed his face for the duration of the semester, but I restrained myself and decided to vent my anger here. The whole ordeal has a somewhat satisfying ending, as I wound up with a C in the class. I was expecting to fail, but perhaps enough people had trouble that the class was curved. Still, there’s no reason someone with my experience should do so poorly in an entry level programming course, but for now I’m happy to have it behind me.