There's an amusing article on syllabi in the latest issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. It seems that in many places, course syllabi are getting longer and longer as professors - on their own and directed by their departments and schools - spell out what's permitted and what's not, what counts as lateness, how to behave in class, etc. They're more like prenuptial agreements than an invitation to a shared intellectual adventure. Some student affairs types tend to approve of these tomes - students feel more comfortable knowing exactly what's expected of them - but some faculty wonder if it doesn't make the relationship of faculty to student more adversarial than it should or need be. Both are right, I suppose...
Anyway, I was amused and appalled to read of a syllabus which stipulates that "the honor code applies also to extra credit work." Well, amused until I learned why it was there: a student had plagiarized an extra credit assignment; the student failed the class; the student challenged the grade to the school honor council; the student won, on the grounds that the syllabus had not made clear that plagiarism was a no-no even for extra-credit work! Hooda thunkit!
