Polenta and other local academic disasters

Here is a picture of the polenta. The cigarette pack was put in the picture for scale by a friend of mine. Unfortunately, he took the picture from such an angle that you really don't get a sense of the size of that bowl. Had it been a "head on" picture, you would see that this was a gianormous bowl of nasty polenta. And this is the leftovers.


My friend Sandra (name changed to protect the guilty), one of the co-hosts of the party at which this massive amount of polenta was served, called me the next day to give me the update on the polenta.
"It's still in the woods" she confided to me over the phone. "No animal even went near it."
"How do you know? What, you were expecting to go out and find a saber toothed tiger trapped in it or something?"
Sandra and I laughed. She threw it out. We will never tell the person who made it that it was revolting because how can you do that? You just hide it in the woods until the party is over, then you dispose of it.

I like Sandra. I like most of the people in my program. Unfortunately, at the moment I do not like grad school. I do acknowledge that the general distaste for things around me has some part in this, probably as an amplifier. Any kind of disphoric state is likely to make the bad seem so much worse. But back to what's irking me.

It's that asshole, Dookie. The one from the Walmart day. I never did continue that story. It was too annoying to think about. I wanted to move on. So here's the short introduction to Dookie. He is a new student in my department who is just noxious. I know of no grad student who he has not offended within the first hour of their knowing him, and I know a fair number of grad students. I know many grads who actively dislike Dookie and a few who will go far out of their way to avoid him. One is the woman he tried to pick up by telling her that "women have the best place to store a man's sperm". I know of several faculty and staff members who find him unctuous at best.

The man is just a fucking asshole, plain and simple. Granted, this is an opinion, but it is one that is shared by so many people and so many different kinds of people that it almost seems it could be argued to be an objective quality.

So that asshole, Dookie, has decided that he can use the intro level lab he TAs to teach his pet theory. His pet theory is racist, sexist, and foul. That's another one of those "shared opinions". Even if one didn't see it as an oppressive social philosophy (preferred by people like David Duke and Hitler) masquerading as various forms of scientific inquiry, the point remains the topics in Dookie's lectures are not even remotely close to what the undergrads are doing in their lecture - the lecture the lab is supposed to go with. Nor are they remotely close to the topics undergrads enrolled in other sections of the same class are covering.

Put a different way, this would be a little like me teaching radical feminist theory in a discussion section for a general introductory linguistics class. I could focus it on language, how lexical choices actively threaten women, homosexuals, and members of other historically exploited and abused groups, how men's discourse styles reflect entitlement attitudes which are related to rape and other antisocial behavior, or how the dominant academic paradigms still work to keep women shut out of the higher levels of research. But I wouldn't, not in that context, because (a) I am not an experienced instructor and I really don't feel confident teaching an extremely controversial topic to first year intro students; (b) It would be a massive departure from what the other students were getting in their other discussion sections but all the students' grades would be based on an assumption of some uniformity across sections; (c) It would in no or very little way support or connect to the material and content of the lecture the section grade is ultimately a part of; (d) Such a dramatic change in curriculum is not one I as a TA for a lab/discussion section am allowed to make (in fact, faculty aren't either, not without review by the College).

But Dookie made a choice that was at least as dramatic, because he's Dookie and he's an asshole (sing along!)

And what did Dookie present to his lab? He presented rape as an adaptation. And what seemed like a lengthy section on child abuse as a good (inverse) measure of parental investment. Let me break that latter one down a bit. Presumably, if a parent is invested in the offspring, that is genetically invested, then that investment overrides the apparently otherwise normal, evolutionarily adaptive human desire to kill, beat, or rape a child. The presence of a non-biological parent (step-parent) in a household is highly correlated with child abuse, according to one (methodologically flawed) records analysis. While Dookie downplays any overt causality of the correlation, the only reason the issue is relevant is that in Dookie's pet theory, that correlation is the basis for speculation (which presupposes a causal link) that the non-biological parent will engage in more harm or risk behavior with a child in their household.

Keep in mind that while there are people, real degree carrying scientists even, who publish in this theoretic orientation, the theory and the findings which are said to support it are strongly contested by numerous other scientists (and have been historically, like back when it was called "eugenics"). It is popular in pop culture and major media, e.g., "we found a gene for intelligence/music ability/diaper changing" (see Pinker et al for good examples), but those people are marketing to, well, idiots who mostly want to sound smart at dinner and cocktail parties and who don't really know or care about the validity of conclusions or the soundness of a research program.

So here's Dookie. A first year, first semester TA who decides he is skilled enough to present this material, which can turn the dryest discussions between the most proper of scientists into what is sometimes referred to as a screaming match, to a lab full of mostly first year, first semester undergrads. The emotional stress that an untrained inexperienced teacher could cause by presenting this material in an insensitive and non-comprehensive manner is immense.

This evening, I read Dookie's lecture. It was sent to me by another (horrified) grad student. I nearly broke the monitor it was open on. I read Dookie's lecture and I screamed. I hollered. I stared blankly at it, read more, yelled more, punched my friend A (I asked first), and literally shook with anger at his arrogance, his presumption.

Then I called my division head and said we would meet tomorrow to talk about what his newest student is doing in his lab section. My division head admitted this assgoblin, so I see this as his mistake to deal with.

It took me several hours to stop twitching. I am still angry at the presumption, the possibility of damage to students in his lab who might have been victimized in life and then had to suffer a second possible victimization because of this arrogant puffed up asshole wanted to put some "spice" in his lab lecture. I am angry because that is what these topics are to people like him. It's not about human suffering, real pain, real threat. It's just a device for livening up a lecture.