A leaked email from The New School’s Talent Engagement Coordinator calling for the hiring of “temporary progress reviewers” was met with backlash by The New School community this weekend.
Student Faculty Solidarity, a student-led workers’ rights group, sent an email to The New School students Saturday asking for input regarding a list of demands being developed to ensure that students who participated in strike action alongside the part-time faculty union received fair treatment after the strike had come to a close. Attached was the leaked internal email, supposedly sent the day before. It is unknown who leaked it.
According to the email, these would be “supplemental graders”; educators outside of the school who would determine students’ grades in each of their courses for the end of the term. These supplemental graders would meet with each student once, evaluate the work they have completed from a given course’s syllabus and assign each student an alternative grade for each class: good progress, sufficient progress, insufficient progress, or unsatisfactory/no submission.
The university has since addressed the email, tweeting Saturday night that the email was unapproved.
“There have been questions about an email making the rounds regarding the hiring of supplemental graders related to the current part-time faculty strike. This email was an unfinished and unapproved draft that should not have been sent,” they tweeted.
The leaked email regarding their planned approach was met with immediate and widespread backlash from students and faculty alike.
“This is unacceptable: not only does it betray the school’s supposed commitment to quality education, but actively undermines the student-faculty relationships the school so proudly presents as its key value,” Student Faculty Solidarity said in the email.
Soon after the email was leaked, the ACT-UAW Local 7902 part-time faculty union denounced the decision in an Instagram post.
“It seems the university cannot see the most obvious solution to the problem — pay your faculty a living wage so they can get back to the classroom to teach and grade,” they wrote.
A major factor in the backlash to the leak involved the required qualifications detailed in the email. The only required qualifications were a master’s degree, experience teaching, comfortability with technology, and an “ability to respond well in a high-stress environment”.
“The Reviewer may be assigned a student in the Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) program in Fashion Design,” the leaked email read. “They need not have a background in the tools used to design clothing patterns or in fabric draping and sewing but will review the stated learning outcomes and the student’s submitted work to determine sufficient progress toward those outcomes.”
Similar descriptions were given for other majors, stating that the background necessary for grading any student at any college does not need to be as in-depth as the faculty these reviewers would replace.
A change.org petition urging students to “Say No to Temporary Progress Reviewers” was made shortly after the leak, describing the proposal as a “horrifying” and “disrespectful” approach to grading. The petition has already reached over 2,800 signatures as of press time.
Abbey Bear (she/her), a second-year illustration student at Parsons School of Design, said she would not trust an outside progress reviewer to decide her grade.
“So many of my professors emphasize the importance of participation, process, and personal development in our classes, and none of these can be purely measured through submitted assignments, much less by strangers in hour-long meetings,” Bear told The New School Free Press.
Adrianna Oquendo (she/they), a fourth-year global studies major at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, said she is particularly concerned with being assessed by an outside grader due to her position as a senior.
“All the mentorship and conversations about my work I’ve had with professors, especially since I’m a senior and my projects are long-term like my capstone, will be valued under the eyes of someone who has no idea what I’ve been working on the whole semester?” she said.
Some community members took to social media to both spread awareness of the email and critique it. Abby Dring (she/her), a fourth-year urban studies major at the Schools of Public Engagement, was one of many students who posted their thoughts about the leak.
“[It is] crazy to think that I may have my thesis, an entire year of work (3+ semesters) graded and determined sufficient by a third party scab,” Dring shared in an Instagram story.
She went on to post that she would refuse to appear at any form of grade determination meeting.
“I refuse to have my work by someone wholly unqualified, who knows nothing about me, my work, or my academic career,” she said.
Other students addressed the controversy more directly.
Philomena Mattes (they/them), a religious studies major at Lang, utilized the “Lang Common Experience” — an alternative learning opportunity given to students by the administration while their teachers are on strike —- to message hundreds of students at a time, directly via email and Canvas, to speak out against the potential progress reviewers.
“For a million obvious reasons, this is a terrible idea — not only does it put our academic transcripts at serious risk, it’s completely disrespectful to the hard work both students and professors have put into these courses, and it’s going to be a massive, massive waste of our tuition dollars (that would be much better spent PAYING THE PROFESSORS WE ALREADY HAVE!),” they said in the message.
Although the school has not yet officially revealed its intentions for grading students this semester, Tokumbo Shobowale, executive vice president for Business and Operations at the university, reaffirmed the administration’s position on the issue in a blog post Sunday.
“We want to be clear that this was not a university-approved message and was sent out by mistake,” he said in the post. “It is incorrect and does not reflect a final, accurate, or official version of the university’s intended plans, and we understand how difficult it has been for some people to read it.”
Shobowale went on to write that, despite this, the university must consider the potential ramifications of leaving students without grades in the event that the strike continues through the end of the semester.
“Our plans must protect our students from the very real risks associated with incomplete instruction or un-filed grades, including risks of non-compliance with the terms of their visas, jeopardizing students’ ability to graduate on time, and potentially altering financial aid eligibility,” Shobowale said.
University President Dwight A. McBride also addressed the controversy during a student Q&A with university administration on Saturday.
“None of the solutions, to be very clear, are ideal. None of them,” he said. “And any progress reviewers that would need to be brought in, if we do not settle this strike soon, would be people who would literally [be] brought in to assess the completion of work. They would not be trying to make an assessment of the quality of that work at this juncture.”
While the university did not mention any specific date as to when grading information would be decided upon, they are expected to announce their grading plans sometime today.
For more information regarding the part-time faculty strike, check our strike page for updates and follow The New School Free Press on Instagram @nsfreepress.