Saw this and found it interesting -
While I don’t condone whatever the students did, an earlier article I read suggested this professor had some other controversial background with his teaching methods. I can’t find the link I read earlier, but will try again.
The grades aren’t upheld.
You can’t fail an entire class unless the entire class did something.
The professor had to know that as soon as one student (who was academically passing) said something, this would be overturned. You can’t work on a college campus for too long without at least becoming aware of the power of the student voice, let alone the power of politics and potential liability. This opens the school up to a huge amount of liability had they upheld the grades–usually courts don’t want to touch cases related to grades, but still an issue that no school wants to deal with.
I think it’s time for this professor to step away. These are things that professors are dealing with in other places fairly frequently–not that it’s acceptable, but unfortunately students not always behaving is a reality. I’m not a faculty member, but I’ve been involved with everything mentioned and worse. Or maybe switch to grad school, where students tend to be more involved and invested. Sounds like the undergrad environment isn’t for him anymore.
ETA: After reading a few different articles, I also think there HAS to be more to this story. I can’t believe that a school would post security guards in class at a professor’s request and then do nothing more to intervene–again, if the professor comes under harm while performing job duties, that’s more liability. There has to be more than we’re seeing to the story. I’m interested to start seeing the student accounts come out–as we all know they will.
I hate to play blame the teacher here, but don’t you wonder what on earth about him in particular is causing such an issue with the class? Why didn’t he call in reinforcements to come observe this class?
Reading between the lines…the professor seems a little off kilter to begin with. Most likely should not be teaching.