Democracy is flawed & why a contract means nothing

Besides books, teachers, and bored students there’s another element to every college class in the country. Rarely discussed by those outside of college, the syllabus is the most fundamental important document in college. Its value ranks far above any textbook or term paper. The syllabus sets the rules of the classroom. It tells the students what to expect. It outlines the instructor’s plan for education. It’s a contract between student and teacher (at least that’s what my professors say at the beginning of every semester).

That being said, a professor can do pretty much whatever they want (thank goodness for tenure!). Quite often teachers unilaterally make changes to syllabus. Most of the time it occurs when a teacher falls behind and decides to 86 an assignment (which gets zero complaints from students). On the rare occasion a teacher decides to add something to a syllabus, it can be a sticky mess (after all it’s a contract).

My teacher decided he wanted to add something to our syllabus. Apparently his carefully created plan for the semester failed to have an assignment that assessed our learning for the first third of the semester (question: how does one assess something that doesn’t exist?). Adding a project is no easy task since the semester was designed to have a mathematically convenient 1000 points. The instructor wanted to halve the point value of two assignments so he could create a third assignment that would keep the semester’s tall at 1000 points…but that’s not really the point of this tale. Instead requiring us to do two projects, his new plan would have three projects. The new project didn’t strike me as too difficult or time consuming (but then again I rarely like to put in anything above minimal effort); however, it was a new project–one that wasn’t in the syllabus or part of the initial plan for our semester.

“Because it’s not in the syllabus, I’m going to leave it up to you,” the instructor said to the class. “I can’t impose the new assignment this late in the semester now that the syllabus has been submitted. We’re going to take a vote and if the majority of the class wants it, we’ll add the new assignment. If it doesn’t pass, we’ll keep the syllabus as is.”

To me this was a no brainer. I could do more work for the same grade or we could keep things as is and wait the semester out until its long, boring end. I didn’t wanna seem too enthusiastic, but I asked the teacher a couple questions while indirectly reminding the class we didn’t need the extra assignment.

After a lengthy class discussion the teacher decided it was time to vote. “Those who want to change the syllabus and add the assignment, raise your hands.” I did a quick count and saw that 17 hands were up in the air–which would be fine in a class of 35. Unfortunately this class had 20 students–one of which was absent. There was no need to count up the no votes–only me and the gal sitting next to me wanted to keep the status quo.

“Did we really just vote to give ourselves extra work,” I whispered to her. She looked as shocked as I was.

Yet another reason why democracy doesn’t work. My classmates are no less foolish than majority of Americans–wooed by a flashy ad campaign without thinking about actually consequences. So much for higher education.