Overheard on campus: the harder they come

• Longitudinal studies of student life and satisfaction:

complaint:  "orientation for new students isn't focused on academic work [2000, 2001]"

• Foreign student describing orientation experience, fall 2008:

I was very surprised that they talked about condoms all the time, all week.

That's One Way to Get to Grad School

22-Year-Old Sells Virginity Online -- and Feds Can't Do a Thing to Stop Her
Thursday, January 15, 2009
By Joseph Abrams
Fox News

Excerpts:

A 22-year-old woman is selling her virginity online — offering her body to bidders nationwide in an auction that reportedly has netted a $3.7 million offer — and the law isn't doing a thing to stop her.

The FBI isn't interested. The U.S. attorney doesn't care. Everything is fine by local police, and she isn't breaking any laws.

That's because Natalie Dylan, a made-up name for a real 22-year-old California college grad, is marketing her maidenhead in Nevada, where prostitution is legal.

But some religious legal groups are objecting to the sexual sale, saying they are concerned that its influence may reach beyond the borders of the "Battle Born" bordello state.

and (my favorites):

The Moonlite Bunny Ranch, the brothel that is arranging and hosting the deal, sounded especially gung-ho about Dylan.

"Natalie is a virgin and would like to sell this priceless and rare commodity in a very exclusive and private setting," says the Bunny Ranch Web site.

While the commodity's rarity may be debatable, more than 10,000 bidders have come forth to put a price tag on Dylan's purity. And if the Bunny Ranch's owner is to be believed, someone has offered $3.7 million, a price far above rubies.

"One time only she will appear at the bunny ranch and give up her virginity to the highest bidder," says the brothel's Web site in a needlessly repetitive statement. Dylan says she is trying to finance graduate studies for her sister and herself.  (full story)

Hints to Natalie:

1) If you're a talented student, the graduate school should be paying YOU to attend--not vice versa. 

2) Nonetheless, the experience may prepare you well for what will follow, should your application be accepted.

Winter Stupidity: It Happens Every Year

I Triple-Dog Dare You: Indiana Boy Gets Tongue Stuck on Light Pole

HAMMOND, Ind. — In a scene straight out of the movie "A Christmas Story," a 10-year-old Hammond boy got his tongue stuck to a metal light pole.

Police say the unidentified fourth-grader was able to tell them that a friend dared him to lick the pole Wednesday night. Temperatures in Hammond were around 10 degrees at the time.

By the time an ambulance arrived, the boy was able to yank his tongue off the frozen pole.

Police say ambulance personnel explained to the boy's mother how to care for his bleeding tongue.

The 1983 movie is set in a fictional city based on Hammond, the hometown of author Jean Shepherd.

Obama Dithers on Dog Choice

While Congress and the President-elect spend their time discussing economic stimulus plans and other trivia, crucial matters, such as the choice of the White House dog,  go unaddressed:

“I’m frustrated with the Obamas, just get a dog already,” said Daisy Okas, a spokesperson for the American Kennel Club, who said she has heard from many angry dog owners in recent days over how the Obama’s have been handling what has become, to them at least, a politically charged issue.

This weekend, we learned that the choice had been narrowed to the Labradoodle and the Portuguese Water Dog, but

This seemed to conflict with the president-elect’s earlier statement that they hoped to rescue a dog from a shelter since, as many dog owners have pointed out in recent days, Labradoodles and especially Portuguese Water Dogs rarely are seen in shelters, especially puppies.
. . . . . . . . .
If nothing else, the ongoing presidential pooch pursuit has been a boon to animal rescue advocates, who said the Obamas’ desire to adopt from a shelter has been great for awareness - whether or not the Obamas actually wind up going the rescue route. “Our numbers sky-rocketed the week they announced that,” said Paula Fasseas, of Pets Are Worth Saving (“PAWS”), an animal welfare organization in Chicago.

Even so, Mr. Obama’s public remarks about the dog have been exasperating to some. “He just keeps making statements that are incompatible,” said Ms. Okas, of the American Kennel Club.

The Obama’s “seem to be exhibiting the classic behavior of first time dog owners,” added Ms. Line, who called the process “ a little bit confusing.”

(full article)

Welcome to Washington.  If he can come out of this one without offending everyone, maybe he really can solve our problems.

Amherst 250th: Say What You Mean

Thanks, Pb!

I'm sure that the people organizing Amherst's 250th Anniversary celebrations were just so excited to win a major gift that they forgot to proofread:

As a historian of the book--and someone who from time to time has to read linguistically and conceptually challenged student papers--I am of course fascinated by the difference between oral and written language. More attention to stylistic felicity might have avoided this embarrassment.

Anyway. . .

Please be more careful next time.

Maybe it's true

As seen in the world of social networking:

f u c4n r34d 7h1s u r34lly n33d 2 g37 4 l1f3

Man Dressed as Norse God Puts Fear of God in Burglar

From The Scotsman (2 Jan.), "Burglar scared off by man dressed as Thor":

A builder scared off a house-breaker by running at him dressed as the Norse god Thor.

The terrified intruder leapt from a first floor window to escape Torvald Alexander, who was dressed as the Norse god of thunder in a red cape and silver helmet and breastplate.

Mr Alexander had just returned from a New Year's Eve fancy dress party when he discovered the man in his home in Inverleith, Edinburgh.

He said he acted instinctively to chase the intruder away, and believed his costume may have added impact.

Mr Alexander, 39, said: "We were both startled but then the instant
reaction was that I ran at him and he just jumped straight out of the window.

"I think I would be quite scared if someone looking almost like a gladiator ran at them.

"He might have thought the property was empty.

"He probably would not have expected to meet a strong builder, especially dressed in tinfoil and silver."

 [. . . .]

(full article)

Bizarre Squid Sex

Used to be that National Geographic titillated white bourgeois males (and their pubescent offspring) with photos of bare-breasted "native" women (all in the interests of science, don't you know). Now that that is neither politically acceptable nor necessary (there's real porn all over the internet, and even tv has gotten pretty racy), what can you write about in order to pique readers' interest?

Animal sex, of course (sex among animals, that is):

The latest electronic newslettter of the venerable organization contains an article with the alluring title, "Bizarre Squid Sex Techniques Revealed":

New insights into the animals' intimate encounters include species that cut holes into their partners for sex, squid that swap genders, and males that deploy flesh-burrowing sperm.

(full article)

New England Prepares for a Storm

Snow and sleet today, danger of ice storm. How New Englanders cope:

(hat tip: kt)

Are You a Clerical Facsist?

At the end of last year, Shiraz Socialist, trying to add some levity to the grim situation of the world, offered a cultural-political questionnaire. Some highlights:

It’s that time of the year when you get bumper issues of magazines, the reviews of the past twelve months and, of course, the Christmas quiz.

So here, for Christmas, is our special quiz.

ARE YOU A CLERICAL FASCIST?

Answer the following 10 questions to check your clerical fascism credentials!

1. Before being published a book should be:-
a) Vetted by a board of clerics for blasphemy
b) Vetted by academics for offensiveness
c) Eh?

2. Putting a bomb in a rucksack and blowing up your fellow citizens:-
a) Sends you to Paradise
b) Sends a message to Tony Blair and George Bush
c) Sends a lot of people to hospital and the morgue, you morons!

3. Women should:-
a) Not go out in public unless escorted by a male relative
b) Not have their rights made into a shibboleth
c) Kick ass! Or crotch!! Or someone’s head in!!! For fuck’s sake
. . . . .

10. The Golden Age was:-
a) 8th century, Baghdad
b) 1917 USSR – there was something to hope for
c) 10 September 2001 – though there was plenty of crap around, it wasn’t this particular kind of crap

(take the full quiz)

As 2009 begins, the questions seem bound to remain relevant for a long time.

Surreal Amherst: Public Peeing Prohibited; Flinging Food Fine

From the Amherst Bulletin Police blotter--starting off the new year with the last of the old (26 December), and the first of the new (the Jan. 2 paper is out today):

As in Nottingham, public urination remains forbidden, but public gestures of friendship to strangers, strange mating rituals, and public flinging of food all "checked out OK" (as we say around here).

Taking the pee out of public:

SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

SATURDAY, DEC. 6
* 12:06 a.m. - Police issued a warning to a man urinating in the area of St. Brigid's Church.

FRIDAY, DEC. 12
* 1:24 a.m. - Police issued a warning to a man urinating on North Pleasant Street near the downtown bars.

SUNDAY, DEC. 21
* 1:53 a.m. - A man urinating near an East Pleasant Street business was issued a warning and sent on his way.

[A little passive voice for elegant variation?]

Interesting that this always seems to happen in the wee, wee hours. Perhaps an enterprising entrepreneur could invent clothing equipped with a device similar to "Mail Goggles."  

Of course, one could imagine various unpleasant and unintended consequences, and one always needs to balance the needs of the public with the health and safety of the individual.  Already in the Renaissance, newfangled books of manners grappled with such dilemmas.

In 1530, the great humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam declared, “To hold back urine is harmful to health”—but added, “to pass it in secret betokens modesty.” Numerous authorities were coming to agree on the impropriety of public urination, though they seemed to allow rather more leeway for public flatulence—on health grounds and because it could more easily be disguised ("let a cough hide the sound")—which occasioned lengthy and complex discussions.

As Norbert Elias pointed out in his classic Civilizing Process (from which the examples here are taken), although the sense of shame was growing in that transitional era, what is striking is (1) “how commonplace it is to meet someone ‘qui urinam reddit aut alvum exonerat’ (urinating or defecating)” and (2) “The unabashed care and seriousness with which questions are publicly discussed here that have subsequently become highly private and strictly prohibited in society.”

In any event, do our brave men and women in blue, in attempting to preserve public decorum by stopping the urinator, risk committing a grave etiquette faux-pas of their own?

Erasmus advised, “It is impolite to greet someone who is urinating or defecating,” advice echoed for generations in other sources, such as The Gallant Ethic of Johann Christian Barth (1731): “If you pass a person who is relieving himself you should act as if you had not seen him, and so it is impolite to greet him.”

Problems to ponder in 2009.

Other behaviors were stranger but are not described as having occasioned warnings:

SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

MONDAY, DEC. 8

* 4:27 p.m. - A man who was described as waving frantically at a train on Bridge Street was located by police. The man was not in distress and told police he was just trying to be friendly to passengers on board.
[Just what sort--motion, speed--of waving constitutes frantic, and who reported him: residents or passengers?]

SATURDAY, DEC. 13

* 12:47 a.m. - A woman being dragged up the stairs of an Olympia Drive home told police she was just goofing off with her boyfriend.
[must be some weird sort of reindeer games]

SUNDAY, DEC. 14
* 4:35 a.m. - Police determined a man banging on the door to a Puffton Village home was just at the wrong location.
[like public urination, this sort of confusion occurs regularly in Amherst--and mainly early in the morning; any connection?]

MONDAY, DEC. 15

* 11:25 p.m. - Police determined people throwing food on cars at a College Street parking lot were determined to be members of a college lacrosse team goofing off.
[Presumably, they first feared it was the debate team cutting loose again.]

Bad Karma:

CITIZEN ASSISTANCE
MONDAY, DEC. 22

* 9:21 a.m. - A North Amherst woman reported getting a letter from a former tenant who wrote that karma would pay her back for what she had done to him. She refused to obtain a restraining order and told police she would be leaving the country for about two months.

DISTURBANCES

* 10:49 p.m. - Police determined a woman screaming at Aspen Chase Apartments was just having difficulties with the holidays.

[For insights into bad karma and trouble with holidays, I refer you to an old favorite and a new posting.]

Stylistic slippage:

Scott has kept up heroically with the flood of incidents, major and minor. Perhaps it was the stress of the holiday pace (or just bad karma) that prompted him to relapse into his awkward old locution. What it lacks in logic, it makes up for in unintended humor:

TUESDAY, DEC. 23
NOISE COMPLAINTS

* 11:38 p.m. - Loud music playing at Mill Hollow Apartments was quiet when police got there.

My guess would be bad karma rather than stress, because we find disturbing oscillations in the pattern way back in the October 3 issue:

NOISE COMPLAINTS

Right:

SUNDAY, SEPT. 14
* 12:25 a.m. - A dog barking on Wildflower Drive was quiet when police got there.
* 2:47 a.m. - People talking loudly on Edgehill Place were quiet when police got there.

MONDAY, SEPT. 15
* 1:17 a.m. - A loud guitar was reported playing at a West Street home, but all was quiet when police got there.

Wrong:

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 17
* 1:45 a.m. - Screeching tires and loud voices on Fearing Street were quiet when police got there.
* 5:09 p.m. - Loud music playing at Southpoint Apartments was quiet when police got there.

And, in a class by itself:
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 17
* 2:07 a.m. - A baby crying at a Grantwood Drive home was later determined to be the sound of a family cat that got into a fight with another cat. The baby checked out OK.
[so, a baby=a sound?]

That's why we call it surreal Amherst.

"Best Hanukkah Moments with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert"

Just to wrap up the so-called holiday season:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Best Hanukkah Moments

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Merry Musical Miracle: Rounds Upon King Wenceslas

Australia adlib presents Michael Greene, " the only person we have ever come across who can whistle and hum two different tunes at the same time...and not only that, he can perform canons, inverted canons, canons in augmentation, and heaps of other two part counterpoint tricks at the same time."

Here he both whistles and hums "Good King Wenceslas"--and after that, for good measure, combines "Waltzing Matilda" and "Danny Boy."

Robin Would

Turns out it's not legal to pee in public in Nottingham, after all:

The signs, which were put up by pranksters in and around Nottingham, are designed to look official.

They feature a toilet sign and include the words: “Public Urination Permitted After 7.30pm”.

[…..]

The notice reads: “In an attempt to reduce late night public nuisance, during the holiday period, Nottingham City Council has designated several public urination areas across the city.

“This urination area will be cleaned daily between the hours of 5am and 6am.”

The story has gotten a fair amount of press, but I like to start with the version from Drink-soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for WAR, which includes a comparative reference to Scotland.

Merry . . . Whatever . . . Again!

Although the modern reader could be forgiven for interpreting this image as some sort of cutesy multiculturalism in this age of Chrismukkah, the reality is rather different--though there is a connection.

As an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Berlin from 2005 explained, the concept goes back over a century to a time when increasingly assimilated German Jews appropriated Christmas celebrations in their own secular manner. (The original term was Weihnukkah, of which Chrismukkah is just an anglicization.)

In recent decades, the term has become respectable--half-serious and half-humorous--and taken on a life of its own.

This image of the menorah evolving into the Christmas tree comes from a postcard sold by the Museum, and the original intent was critical rather than celebratory. The caption reads:

"Darwinian: Zionist caricature on assimilation, from the periodical, 'Schlemiel' (1904)"

That these issues still arouse strong sentiments can be seen from this rather less subtle  blog entry by Jeremy Cardash and its responses at the Jerusalem Post.

In any event, greetings of the season on whichever holiday(s) you happen to be celebrating.

Maybe It's Not Such a Wonderful Life, After All. Praising Potter and Bashing Bailey in the Wake of the Financial Meltdown

Everyone--or almost everyone--seems to love Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life," though it's beloved in part simply because we think it is supposed to be. We forget (or don't know) that, at the time of the film's release, many critics--e.g. in England--panned it as mawkish and treacly--which it is (though I appreciate it as a holiday staple, a little bit of "heartwarming" goes a very long way). Part of the reason that we like it, of course, is that we get to applaud plucky self-sacrificing George Bailey standing up for the little guys against the plutocrat Potter.

Now, however, Liz Gunnison, writing in Condé Nast Portfolio, takes a new look at the film in the light of the current financial crisis and asks whether we've been backing the wrong horse:

"George Bailey, Subprime Lender"

Miserly old Mr. Potter was right: It’s a Wonderful Life hero George Bailey never should’ve given those loans to the likes of Ernie and Bert (full article)

23 December: Festivus is here!

I was so immersed in work that, had Mojobear not reminded me, I would almost have forgotten the approach of Festivus.

One of my grievances is that Festivus comes but once a year.  Fortunately, thanks to the wonders of recording technology and the internet, we can relive its joys at any time.

SantaCorp Pleads Case For Bailout

(from Iowahawk)

WASHINGTON - Flanked by officials from the United Elf Toytinkerers union, SantaCorp CEO Kris Kringle today told the House Ways and Means Committee that without immediate government financial help, his firm would be forced to declare bankruptcy, lay off thousands of elves and reindeer, and potentially cancel its annual worldwide Christmas Eve toy delivery.

"These are grim economic times for everyone, but even more so for non-profit toy manufacturers in the Snow Belt," said Kringle. "Our accountants have indicated that we are on track to exhaust our reserves of cash and magical pixie fairydust by December 23. Oh deary me."

Kringle and UET union president Binky McGiggles presented a draft emergency bailout plan to the committee calling for US $18 trillion in federal grants, loan guarantees, and sugarplum gumdrops that they said would keep the company solvent through December 26. (full article)

Announcing: Student Paper Follies (SPF 100)

"The Church had to burn him at the steak."

Sounds like a good meal wasted.

Dogs Prefer Socialism (what do students want??)

Shake, MIMie! Shake!"
From The Drunkablog, December 11:

The Maoist Internationalist Movement (aka Henry Park) on dogs' preference for Marxism:

Karl Marx said socialism operates "to each according to her work," while communism has the distributional principle of "to each according to her need." A study shows dogs perform tricks according to pay, thus proving they prefer socialism.

Logical, logical.

"In treat-heavy conditions, the dogs give their paws for nearly every trial. When neither dog was given rewards, the dogs only gave their paws 20 out of 30 times and they required more verbal prompting to do so. But, when one animal was rewarded and the other was not, the unrewarded dogs only shook 12 times and displayed considerably more agitation than in either of the other tests."

The study's situation where one dog gets the reward for the other's trick is an indication of what happens under parasitism. Dogs don't like it.

From my own observation, dogs love parasites. Yum.

Capitalism is parasitism, rewards for owning things instead of working.

So just like any communist state, I make sure Billy Bob works for every Kibble and Bit.

Update: Mmmmm, treat-heavy conditions.

[The reference in the original piece is to:
Alexis Madrigal, "Dog Unto Others: Canines Have Sense of Fairness," http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/dogenvy.html; The Citizen]

Update by Citizen Wald:  All kidding aside, it is interesting to compare the above with the treatment in the mainstream media.   Writing for National Geographic, Rebecca Carroll entitled her report, "Dogs Can Feel Envy, Study Suggests."

The first scientific study to find envy in non-primates affirms what many already know: dogs can get jealous.

"Everybody who has a dog at home probably [suspects] that dogs can be very jealous of other dogs and also of people," said lead author Friederike Range of the University of Vienna, Austria.

In experiments with 43 dogs, Range's team showed that the canines reacted to inequity. (full article)

I have just a couple of things to add.  

To begin with, the proper word (as a philosopher-colleague used to insist on explaining to us in faculty meetings) should be "envy" rather than "jealousy"--for example, that's why the King James Bible has God say, "I am a jealous God"--not an envious God (would you want an "envious" God? He's tough enough as is); perhaps my friend Kathy will pick up this theme in her new blog.  Okay: three things to add.  ("Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency.")

One sees here the contrast between two worldviews:  Socialism regards people as basically good, communitarian, and desirous of cooperation, and expects good to result.  Capitalism, by contrast, is based on greed (the secularized equivalent of the Augustinian Catholic/Protestant notion of the utter depravity of human nature), and regards people as individualistic and selfish, and yet expects:  volilà, good to result. Go figure.  To a socialist, the dog behavior is about a positive thing, a feeling of moral outrage at inequity. To a the mainstream capitalist journalist, the dog behavior is about a negative thing (envy [vide supra] is, after all, not a positive character trait--closer to the covetousness forbidden in the Ten Commandments than the jealousy of God):  resentment at the good fortune of another.  The emphasis on the personal motivations of the dog rather than the social circumstances that occasioned them exemplifies the differences in the foundational assumptions.

To return to an only slightly more serious plane again, the dog behavior also fits a larger pattern that seems to transcend species (I've been a member of a faculty team that is studying the interdisciplinary significance of evolution in the context of our program in Culture, Brain, and Development.  Putting a natural-scientific spin on the public response to the recent financial meltdown, the Science Times this past October ran an article by Benedict Carey entitled [in the print edition], "Wired for Justice: The urge to punish is more than Wall Street loathing: it's instinctive," which noted, inter alia:

“The urge to take revenge or punish cheaters,” said Michael McCullough, a professor of psychology at the University of Miami and author of the book “Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct,” “is not a disease or toxin or sign that something has gone wrong. From the point of view of evolution, it’s not a problem but a solution.”

The downside of these instincts, Dr. McCullough added, “is that they often promote behavior that turns out to be spiteful in the long run.”

The urge to punish is not restricted to humans. Researchers have found evidence of self-protective retaliation, or revenge, and third-party, or “moralistic,” punishment in many of nature’s diverse niches.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Fortunately for the economy, researchers say, a strong countervailing psychological force is also at work: the instinct to forgive, and to cooperate. Punishments are balanced by peace offerings, and in fact researchers have come close to calculating the rough ratio most people employ.

[The article explains that people tend to reward the behavior of another in kind:  cooperation engenders cooperation, and betrayal prompts retaliation.  Ultimately, though, the desire is for cooperation, and cooperation ultimately proves most advantageous to all parties. --The Citizen]
. . . . . . . . . .

The upshot of all this, researchers say, is that human beings prefer cooperation, both in their individual makeup and in the makeup of their social groups. In a recent study, Dr. McCullough found that the urge for revenge against personal betrayals erodes in the same way some kinds of memory do: sharply in the first few weeks, slowly thereafter.

“The forgiveness instinct is every bit as wired in as the revenge instinct,” he said. “It seems that our minds work very hard to get away from resentment, if we can.”  (full article)

Actually, this reminds me of something else.  (Okay, four things to add. "Amongst our weaponry...").  Hampshire College has been participating in a study of student experience conducted by the respected Wabash College Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts.  Among the most striking findings: students did not find our courses "challenging." This was obviously a serious blow to a very expensive private college that likes to call itself the leading innovative educational institution in the country.  Experts in the field of "assessment" (something of a trendy bullshit term, but one that contains a kernel of not fully digested truth within the mass of waste matter) like to think--not unreasonably, it seems to me--that claims should be demonstrable: if you say that you have goal X, you should be able to show, by some means accessible to the average rational human, that you are attaining or at least moving closer to it.  Calling yourself something doesn't make it true (think of your own examples from politics or personal life).  As a member of the Wabash Site Visit Team and the College Retention Committee, I have had a close-up look at the survey methods and results.

Even more telling and disturbing (if that is possible) than the results of the survey themselves were the responses of most of my colleagues.  That's a matter for another posting, but in brief:  many simply refused to confront the fact, raising excuse after excuse, only to be told that this or that potential explanation had been factored in and ruled out.   The typical response was: "Well, MY course was challenging.  It must have been someone else's they were talking about."  Well, (1) if ALL individual courses were challenging, then how do you account for the collective result?  (2) that's a nice expression of self-esteem, but what faculty consider "challenging"--e.g. assigning difficult but ideologically homogenous pieces (the often unintelligible works of Judith Butler spring to mind) to which one expects a set ideological response--may not constitute a "challenge" in the minds of most rational humans, not to mention, eighteen-year-olds.  

As my mentor when I got here used to tell me and students alike: "When three people tell you you're drunk, it's time to lie down and take a nap."

Basically, the faculty went through the stages of trauma and grief, on a petty academic plane (the emotions run so high because the stakes are so low):  Having moved through "denial" and "anger," they are (more than a year later) getting around to "acceptance," though most of their proposed solutions display a disconnect with the actual causes of the problem.

To connect with the stories above: one of the sources of student discontent (above and beyond boring, dogmatic, or otherwise intellectually unchallenging courses) was a feeling that they lacked an intellectual and moral community that shared their own values about both ideas and hard work: (1) Some students came here (inspired by our publicity) eager to learn and found others more interested in smoking weed. (2) Serious students also expressed resentment at the fact that--in an institution in which a culture of lax attitudes toward deadlines has been endemic for decades--students who failed to meet deadlines or even complete all their work seemed to face no sanctions, and sometimes even received very positive evaluations (we write individual prose assessments rather than assign mere letter grades).  Whether this was because professors were inherently kindhearted, gutless and scared of bad student reviews, or just lacking in standards themselves was a topic of some debate.  In any case, the difference between superior performance, average performance, or failure to perform was blurred, and many students found that picture disturbing.

Dean of the Faculty Aaron Berman offered a usefully concrete response to these findings that just happened to reflect the same results shown in the scientific studies cited above.  My Social Science colleague Michelle Bigenho taught a January term course in Bolivian music and culture in which, as he puts it: "Several of the instruments that the students use and practice require two people to complete a scale. The students quickly come to understand that if they miss class they deprive their comrades of the ability to practice; they learn that the success of one is dependent upon the success or all." All the students did the work on time and supported one another. 

I train dogs. I teach students. Allowing for the necessary biological-psychological differences between them:  The average rational person--like a dog (the most humane and rational creature on the planet)--would see it as a simple matter of equity:  Do the trick and get the biscuit.  Don't perform:  (to dog) no reward; (to humans)  We told you the requirements in advance.  Sorry, no evaluation.

And of course, there are no bad dogs:  only bad humans who fail to treat and raise them well.

Madame de Staël (who was something of a bitch herself): "The more I see of men the more I like dogs."

Mark Twain:  "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man; (Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar)

and "The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man's.
- Letter to W. D. Howells, 4/2/1899"

Amen. Praise be to dog.