Fair Treatment, my ass

I'm steaming, frustrated, saddened all at once. Picture this: you have wanted all your life to teach at a university. Finally, you land a contract. The first course you teach goes exceptionally well; the students think you walk on water. The next semester, you get to teach the same course again. From day one, you have one particular student who is a pain in the neck--a real attention-seeker, who gets pissed off when he cannot have _your_ notes to photocopy and who will not shut up when anyone else (including you) is talking in class. New to the job, you don't know what to do. You seek the advice of colleagues, of department chairs. How do you control a disruptive student? How do you quell your alarming suspicion that the hostility arises from your open and frank discussion of lesbian and gay issues that began on the first day of class? No real help comes from the powers that be. Word is, the student is a "good student," a "good guy"--he's involved in student politics after all and awarded for it. You agonize over what to do, how to be fair, how to keep the class on track. No one really lays down for you what your options for dealing with this very difficult situation might be. You struggle through only to be told at the end of the semester that this student is filing a complaint against you for discriminating against him, for not letting him speak in class, for effectively harrassing him. The committee that deals with fair treatment, harrassment, etc, will hear his case. Never mind that endless levels of administration have failed to provide adequate support or even hear your case properly. You are now on the defensive. The student sits home and polishes his award.

A big part of me wishes the above person were me, so I could fight the fight on my own behalf, pull out all ths stops, accuse all the right people in style. But it's not my fight; I can't dispell my colleague's fear of both formal and informal recriminations. Unfortunately, the best I can do is support her fight and hope there is a grain of decency left in someone at this damn university.

How does my blood boil? Let me count the ways.