Thanks!

It's true though

I'm saying you want to have others in the loop with you. Especially these days when admins have all gone wobbly.

I'm saying the TA did the right thing by taking it to a professor. You seem to be saying that was the wrong thing to do, but if I've misunderstood you, I apologize. I'm not saying that going to your department head will magically stop the complaint.

The TA has a stack of essays that must be graded. "Do nothing" is not an option.

Exactly. They need to be doing a much better job. It's absurd that this complaint has taken up as much time as it has. A department head or dean should've looked at this for 5 minutes and said no.

What would you have the TA do instead?

Someone else mentioned that the TA did take it to a higher up professor, which was the right thing to do. I assume you aren't suggesting that the TA shouldn't have discussed it with anyone in the department.

That's good to hear!

Definitely. I'm certainly not blaming the TA.

So, my advice to anyone who is a TA, if you get an essay like this, take it to someone in your department. Your major professor, the department head, head of comp. (if it's in English comp. You see a ton of this in English comp.) Run it up the food chain so you're not alone.

I think professors have an ethical obligation to assume their students are writing in good faith, even if they are failing at the assignment. But, there are students that do write essays/stories, etc simply to cause damage.

It absolutely would not surprise me at all to find out the essay was written with this goal in mind.

Exactly. I do agree. She should've gotten something.

I must admit, though, I'd have gotten a zero if I'd turned in an essay like that in the early 90s. And any complaints would've gone nowhere. Que: old man screams at sky.

This is what I've thought too. Zero is over the top. It's definitely a failing paper, but zero implies you didn't even try. There's an attempt here and without the demons, it's likely a 40% or so. That said, the instructor shouldn't be on administrative leave and OU admin needs to find a backbone.

I'm a lifelong democrat, and there's absolutely no way I would ever vote for a candidate who campaigns on sending US officers to an international tribunal. So, if anybody thinks that's how to win over independents then I guess we're looking at President Vance.

I wonder how that would've impacted American Top 40 in the late 60s/early 70s.