As we noted earlier, though the Columbia University pro-Hamas encampment and Hamilton Hall occupation have both been cleared, it’s pretty evident the lunatics are still running the asylum there, as evidenced by a plea from the Columbia Law Review student editors for law school administrators to “cancel exams and give passing grades for their work throughout the semester.”
The reasons cited? “The violence we witnessed last night has irrevocably shaken many of us… we also know this to be the same for a majority of our classmates.”
READ: Jonathan Turley Lays Some Reality on New Laughable Demand From Columbia Law Students
For those who missed the letter, here’s what it said in full.
As pathetic of a demand as that was – especially considering that the legal profession is no place for wimps, what is even more pathetic is that apparently, some professors on campus have shown a willingness to oblige.
David Bernstein, a law professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, shared the following excerpt from an email sent out by one of the profs at Columbia, which stated that their students’ final exam had been canceled and that they would all be getting As because of current academic “conditions”:
“I am canceling our final next Wednesday, as [I/we] simply cannot pretend that academic business can go on under current conditions. You have all received a grade of A for the course.
Please take good care of yourselves.”
While it is easy to dunk on that professor for the decision, it should be noted that on Wednesday, Columbia announced how final exams were to be handled in light of current events, and the guidance included options like making sure the exam grade did not negatively impact their overall grade or outright canceling the exams altogether:
In order to address the concerns of our members in an evolving campus environment, all academic activities for schools on the Morningside Heights campus will be fully remote for the remainder of the semester (with carve-outs noted below). Any remaining class meetings, review sessions, or office hours should be held fully remotely, and all final exams and other final assessments should be fully remote. Instructors should be in touch with students in their classes as soon as practicable to explain how the remote version of final exams and final assessments will be conducted. Please see more guidance below on possible adjustments that instructors might make.
[…]
Adjustments to final exams/assessments:
- Faculty are encouraged to provide accommodations in their final assessments which may include giving a take-home final, modifying the final’s weight, adjusting the grading policy such that the final exam does not negatively impact the final grade (i.e. a no-harm final), making the final exam optional, or canceling the final exam. Faculty are encouraged to consult the academic deans of their schools for support in considering which option may be best for their classes.
Just pathetic, and what a terrible example to set, especially coming from the top.
Columbia continues to be an example of how not to handle student activism that gets wildly out of hand, and parents who are looking at higher education institutions to see if they would be good fits for their teenage children might want to consider crossing Columbia off their lists.
Because students throwing tantrums as a way to get out of doing the hard work – and administrators going along with it – is not how it is supposed to be done, and the only way Columbia will learn at this point is for people to simply walk away from it… en masse.
