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Dear Editor,
Nick Bahl’s opinion piece regarding Professor Oneida Meranto
raises some interesting issues, including the question of what happens
here when a student and a professor disagree.
Metro State has a number of ways of addressing such conflicts, through
avenues both formal and informal. Many of these are discussed
in the MSCD Student Handbook, and they include speaking with the professor,
the department Chair, the Dean, and/or the Vice President for Equal
Opportunity. The Counseling Center is also an excellent resource
for students who are troubled by issues raised in the classroom and
wish to examine their own reactions and learn from them. Peer
advocates are available for students at Metro, and Student Services
provides support and conflict resolution through a formal procedure
for students experiencing problems in their classes or with their
professors.
Academic freedom is not academic anarchy. Part of the responsibility
of academic freedom is to use the mechanisms that have been created
to settle intellectual disputes and allow respectful resolutions,
even when the agreement is to disagree. Academic freedom is
not disciplinary proceedings behind closed doors. Academic freedom
is not undocumented accusations. It is not forced resignations,
and it is certainly not termination of professors because of the views
they express in their classrooms.
A college that has true academic freedom is a community of
scholars, with a diversity of skilled professors and open-minded students,
where established procedures and traditions serve to keep the discourse
fact-based and civil. Academic freedom includes not just the
right, but the obligation for faculty members to speak the truth as
they see it. In a college, professors guide a complex learning
process. Learning sometimes involves discomfort, and we cannot
guarantee that the process will be pleasant for every student at every
moment.
Dr. Meranto asked Mr. Bahl to think about things he didn’t
want to think about. Good for her. That’s what teachers
are supposed to do. Whether he agreed with her or not, her teaching
stimulated him to write quite a few column inches of response.
This is a sign that she was doing her job. We often learn the
most from teachers with whom we disagree, even though we may not appreciate
them so much at the time.
I hope that when Mr. Bahl has graduated from Metro and moved on to
whatever life holds for him, he will grow to appreciate a teacher
who asked him to define his beliefs and consider why he holds them.
A good college curriculum challenges students to think about the world
in many different ways. That process includes listening thoughtfully
and respectfully to people with whom you may not agree, and remembering
that a classroom is not a shouting TV talk show.
At Metro State, each course is a different experience, created by
a faculty member with the goal of offering students both broader knowledge
and deeper understanding. Professors who are able to expand
horizons, perhaps especially in directions that students would rather
not look, are a major part of Metro’s success in educating
students who succeed in the real world.
Rebecca V. Ferrell
Professor of Biology
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