Category: Life

This last year I challenged what I deemed to be unethical behaviour by the University of Ottawa. I didn’t write about it until now for my own protection.

On a most superficial level, the issue was that tuition did not cover the cost of grading assignments. Students were instead required to pay a third party, chosen at the discretion of the professor, an exorbitant fee. If you didn’t pay this third party, you got a mark of zero.

That in itself was objectionable. Tuition should at the very least cover the cost of grading school work. Now there was a way to wave this fee, which was to spend over $200 on a new textbook. A used one wouldn’t do. Because you see, the third-party was the book publisher, and this was all part of a tactic to kill the used book market. You could either buy a used book for $140, and then spend $60 to have your assignments marked – or you could just buy a new textbook.

Of course it doesn’t cost $60 per student per semester to run a web-based automated marking system. The actual fee would be less than a single dollar. Some professors at the University of Ottawa had taken a stand against this kind of unethical relationship. They still employed automated grading systems, but their use was covered by tuition. Furthermore, those grading systems were not run by the book publishers.

So without further ado, here is the communication between myself and the University of Ottawa. Names have been removed. Below is the initial email I sent.

Hello Mr. [Dean of Science Faculty],
You appear to be the most appropriate contact for this, but please let me know if I should consult someone else.

As it stands now, tuition in my physics class does not cover the cost of grading assignments. That’s an extra fee that’s collected outside the University. This fee is collected by a company that runs the automated marking site to which these assignments are submitted (MasteringPhysics.) If I do not pay this fee, I get a mark of zero on all assignments, even if I paid tuition/incidental fees owed to Ottawa U.

It seems to me that the grading of assignments should be covered by tuition. I don’t mind paying more for tuition if it means my assignments will be graded. Is it possible that it could be made policy that tuition also cover the grading of assignments/midterms/exams?

Thank you,

Julien

That elicited the following reply.

Dear Mr. McArdle:

Thank you for your letter and for bringing this issue to my attention.  I will look into this matter and get back to you ASAP.

Regards,

Followed by another reply.

Dear Mr. McArdle,

I was forwarded your e-mail regarding your concerns over the purchase of MasteringPhysics. Actually, a professor cannot require you to purchase a software license or an access fee to a website. We can require you to purchase things such as lab coats and safety glasses to do labs and, for all intents and purposes, the nature of our exams require you to purchase a calculator so as to be able to complete them within a given time. We cannot penalize a student with a mark of zero for not buying a license or paying a website access fee. Your points are therefore extremely well taken. I agree with you.

However, a professor is within his rights to incorporate such a piece of software or a website within a course if it is academically warranted. MasteringPhysics does indeed grade your assignments, but it also offers tutorials on physics topics, interactive simulations that try to relate physics to everyday phenomena, virtual experiments, and math reviews. We use MasteringChemistry in our general chemistry course (on the English side…the French equivalent does not exist) and it really does help the students who use it more than just as a tool for submitting and grading assignments. The same applies to interactive in-class response systems (“clickers”).

So we have informed Professor [Redacted] that he cannot impose the purchase of MasteringPhysics. However, he can offer it as a choice. Therefore, the marking scheme will be adjusted so that the students have a choice:

1) They use MasteringPhysics as within the existing formula to generate a final mark

2) They do not use MasteringPhysics and the weight of the assignments is displaced to the final exam

Regardless of the choice made by a student, a final mark of 100% for the course is possible and the weighting scheme used to generate the final mark is a result of a choice made by a student.

This is actually a difficult issue that many universities are facing and with which they are now struggling, and I really do thank you for bringing this point to our attention. Academically speaking, I strongly urge you to use MasterPhysics as I would any chemistry student to use MasteringChemistry. Your name has been kept confidential, so you really are free to now make the choice that you feel is best for you.

Take care,

Professor/Professeur [Redacted]
Vice-Dean (Undergraduate Studies), Faculty of Science / Vice-doyen (Études de premier cycle), Faculté des sciences
Professor, Department of Chemistry / Professeur, Département de chimie
University of Ottawa / Université d’Ottawa

My response.

Dear Mr. [Vice-Dean],

I appreciate your in-depth response and having looked into this matter.

I agree with your assertion that a professor is entirely within their rights to call upon external resources not covered by tuition that may assist the student in learning. I view online resources to be akin to the role of textbooks in that regard.

My objection, which I believe you correctly characterized, was with students receiving a grade of zero on their assignments had they not paid this third party a fee. I was uncomfortable with the implication that tuition didn’t cover the cost of grading work, though perhaps that’s just a new reality. I greatly welcome, and am entirely satisfied with, having the option between the two weighing schemes.

Thank you for the confidentiality that was afforded to me,

Julien McArdle

As you can see, it wasn’t a full victory. If you didn’t pay the book publisher, you weren’t allowed to hand in assignments. But at least you weren’t given a mark of zero.

I’m disappointed that the University of Ottawa chooses to cooperate with book publishers to coerce students to undermine their own financial interests. It’s not just being able to buy used textbooks – it means that options like taking textbooks out from the libraries are no longer possible. It all punishes those who can afford it least. Of course there are benefits to automated grading systems, and I wholeheartedly support their use. What I object to is the abuse of that role to undermine students in something that ought to be entirely unrelated.

The appropriate response moving forward, in my mind, is to enact a policy in which book publishers and the company that runs the grading system cannot be one and the same. If you want an automated system, you’ll have to get it from someone that doesn’t have it in their financial interest to exploit that relationship.

I suppose I was a bit enigmatic with my previous post on Policing Bodies. Part of it was anger at a whole bunch of shit I had seen happen to others. Part of it was me expressing anger at what I felt was my inability to come out, but in doing so pretty much came out without being specific as to what.

So to be clear: I’m polyamorous. It’s an umbrella term for a form of consensual non-monogamy, in which a person can have multiple partners. There are as many forms of this as there are relationships, all being a little different. Some dynamics might involve having multiple romantic partners, some might involve one romantic partner and multiple sexual partners, some might involve one relationship having a greater time commitment compared to others, some might involve a more equal spread. There is no one formula.

I think the thing I appreciate most about being poly is that I get to have relationships in a way that feels right to me. I don’t have to follow a script – if it feels right to meet once a week, cuddle, and watch movies – I can. If it feels right to not have any sexual context, that’s fine too. Without a model to funnel me into, monogamy aside, the outside loses the ability to pressure certain expectations of what I should do.

I’ve been in a polyamorous relationship for a year and a half, but didn’t come out previously to non queer friends, even my most trusted ones. I was mostly monogamish anyways, I told myself. Plus I kept having bad experience after bad experience coming out elsewhere, and I thought it was better to not say anything.

Then I met this guy, purely by serendipity. And we started to date. And it’s been going great. And just like entering a serious gay relationship brought coming out to the forefront, so too did this. But I felt like I couldn’t, so I wrote that post.

Thank you for your words of support. They inadvertently started the ball rolling. On Tuesday I gave you the details JT. Then something unexpected happened that removed all hesitation. So after a quick check-in at home, I outed myself on Facebook.

I was told during one of those coming outs that this information had no place in the public sphere, that it belonged to the bedroom. I disagree very strongly with this, because these people are important relationships in my life, as important as a monogamous couple would attribute each partner.

I think it’s fucked up to erase the existence of a person. I understand why people stay in the closet, and I don’t fault them for it. I’m upset at the environment that made it so.

I can hear the “but they’re just not the same as a monogamous partner!” Really? They’re just as important to me. The funny thing is, and as you noted Tina when I ran into you today, this isn’t actually all that uncommon with queer couples.

Pretty much all my queer friends are poly. It’s a living, breathing network of people. It doesn’t work for everyone, and that’s cool too. It’s just another way through which to experience this world, and if it suits, great, if it doesn’t, great.

As a final bit, to come out completely:

Though I did come out as gay first, I actually identify as pansexual. This means that gender isn’t a factor in who I’m attracted to. It just so happens that I’ve always been with men (the mystery date is also a guy.) I don’t mind when I’m considered gay.

I’m currently spending lots of my time questioning how I see myself, in particular in relation to my body. I identify as male, that lines up with my sex, I use male pronouns, and have a mostly masculine gender expression. I don’t expect that to change. Nevertheless, there are parts of me that really don’t jive with that. So I’m exploring.

Holy shit that felt good.

So I got my tax refund the other day, and I promptly purchased two items: new shoes to replace my ripped-in-four-places boots, and a new laptop. It’s an 11.6″ Acer V5, which was on sale at FutureShop for $379.

The laptop came installed with Windows 8 – more on that later. In any case, I replaced it with the latest version of the popular Linux distribution Xubuntu. To pretty it up, I installed the Cinnamon desktop environment and Docky. The end result is pretty and functional.

After installing Linux, everything worked out of the box. Bluetooth, wifi, sound – even my networked printer was detected. The only exception was the brightness buttons weren’t doing anything. That was resolved by adding a line to a file (“acpi_backlight=vendor” to the grub configuration.)

I also installed Windows 7 inside of VirtualBox so that I could get the occasional Windows-only thing running like Netflix. I was able to get the American Netflix selection by setting the DNS servers inside of Windows to those run by Unblock-Us.

For the above screenshot, the left window is in Linux while the right one is in Windows. I get the best of both worlds running together thanks to VirtualBox’s seamless mode.

The laptop itself is great. It has a low-power Intel Core i3-2365, 4GB of RAM, and 500GB hard drive space. It also has 802.11n dual-band wifi, gigabit ethernet, a multi-finger touchpad, USB 3.0, and VGA+HDMI out. The machine is small with its 11.6″ screen, and so quite light.

The included processor is powerful enough to run Netflix on Windows smoothly, yet energy efficient enough to have the whole system be relatively cool to the touch. It isn’t anywhere near as powerful as a top-end mobile processor, but that’s irrelevant since it fully meets my needs. I also don’t need the thin profile or other luxuries afforded by today’s ultrabooks.

Going back to Windows 8, it’s a pretty solid operating system. But it isn’t at all suitable for laptops and computers lacking a touch screen. It’s designed to keep things far apart to make it more usable with a finger – which is the opposite of what’s ideal for those controlling a mouse pointer.

Furthermore, Windows 8 is very much of the smartphone design philosophy: few options and intuitive. That means that most of the stuff I like to do with a laptop, which involves exerting granularity, are not available outright. You need to take extra steps and jump design paradigms. This is great for my parents and those who want a computer that’s easier to use, but not so ideal for myself.

I think what you’ll see are most applications migrating to this new iPhone-esque design philosophy. I can’t imagine how more applications that need all those options will shed their apparent complexity to make the jump, but that’s more a lack of imagination on my behalf. I’m sure most people thought the same when the transition from command-line to graphical interfaces was happening during the eighties.