SAF Wins at U Nevada-Reno (2A related)

SAF Wins at U Nevada-Reno

Posted 6/10/2004 from FrontpageMag "A conservative student at the University of Nevada in Reno has successfully contested a discriminatory grade he received for supporting the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In her advanced Organizational Behavior class, Professor Linda Barrenchea had asked students to argue the gun control issue using the utilitarian approach to moral reasoning. Jeremy Rosenstengel and several classmates took a pro-Second Amendment approach to the assignment and argued against gun control, and because of that, received lower grades than classmates who argued for gun control.

The former University of Nevada student, who now has his bachelor's degree, contends that the professor allowed her personal opinions on the gun control issue to enter into her evaluation of students' tests. 'After going through my education,' he says, 'I really found that, in a lot of classes, if you don't kowtow to what the teacher believes -- not even what they're teaching, but what they believe -- your grades will suffer, not just on paper but through in-class intimidation.'
After Rosenstengel confronted Barrenchea with further evidence to support his position, she reluctantly raised his test grade from a score of 70 percent to a 100 percent. However, the instructor would not apologize and still questions the validity of the pro-Second Amendment argument and certain facts and studies that the student used to back it up.

In getting his grade changed, Rosenstengel feels he scored a win for student's intellectual and academic freedom. He says this victory would not have been possible without the help of the group Students for Academic Freedom (SAF), which provided him with counsel.

Rosenstengel feels university officials need to do more to ensure that all students are graded fairly and equally. 'What I'd really like to see them do is to adopt an academic bill of rights. I think that would be really beneficial, not just for the campus itself, but really for the student body,' he says."

You can read the complete story at:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13722

Rosenstengel feels university officials need to do more to ensure that all students are graded fairly and equally. 'What I'd really like to see them do is to adopt an academic bill of rights. I think that would be really beneficial, not just for the campus itself, but really for the student body,' he says." Slippery slope there, methinks. Have the governing body setting the course for fair and equitable anything ends up being what THEY think is fair and equitable, which may not be the RIGHT thing for everyone as individuals.
I'd say he came out well ahead and hopefully learned a lesson that life isn't fair and sometimes you've got to fight your own fight with the proper tools and backup support group.

Hivethink. The Future for America? Maybe not, if there are more Jeremy Rosenstengels lurking about.

...the instructor would not apologize and still questions the validity of the pro-Second Amendment argument and certain facts and studies that the student used to back it up.

Ignorance and bigotry love to hide behind the cloak of academic freedom.

Ignorance and bigotry love to hide behind the cloak of academic freedom.

It's okay... it was for the children! :rolleyes:

the utilitarian approach to moral reasoning.
The very structure of the question is socialist. The Utilitarian Theory (of Rights) says that if something can be found to be less good than some majority deems is appropriate, that right can, and should, be extinguished.
II. Hutcheson's treatment of rights is particularly interesting. It is quite subtle and anticipates (by over a hundred years!) J. S. Mill's utilitarian theory of rights which is much better known. Here is his general statement:

``Whenever it appears to us, that a faculty of doing, demanding, or possessing any thing, universally allow'd in certain circumstances, would in the whole tend to the general good, we say, that one in such circumstances has a right to do, possess, or demand that thing. And according as this tendency to the publick good is greater or less, this right is greater or less.'' (112)