and, oh yeah, on a Christian campus
This week my freshers are doing debates. The topics the class chose were legalizing gay marriage, death penalty, and reparations for slavery. One student missed the day we decided on topics and gave debate group preferences, so I assigned her to a group in need of a choleric. It was gay marriage.
Two weeks later, debate week, she tells me a day before her debate that she doesn't feel morally comfortable debating gay marriage.
I explained to her, as I had previously explained to the class, that debate was an exercise in logic, emotion, and ethos, and that it was too late for her to opt out: she'd be leaving her group in a lurch and it was unfair to them and to the debate itself to come to me this late. I told her to look at it from the standpoint of strengthening her own argument style, which is something I'd told the entire class earlier.
She said, "Well, other teachers can't believe you're doing this topic on a Christian campus, and my parents told me that I shouldn't do it. They can't believe a teacher would assign this."
Now that made me a little pissy. What is with people not taking responsibility? It was her responsibility to know about the work assigned the day she was gone, not mine; it was her responsibility to come to me earlier, not a day before her debate, and tell me about this; it's her responsibility to make up her own damn mind, not her parents, not other teachers (it is, after all, her name on the line when she agreed to come to this college--not her parents!); and it's her responsibility to know the truth about the debates: the subjects were decided on by the students, not me, though when it comes down to it I'm happy to defend this debate choice.
The trouble is, I teach on a Christian campus, and one of the strong and somewhat misused points of Christianity is clinging fast to your beliefs in the face of oppression. I guess this was one of those times for her. Since this is a 100-level class, I had no interest in making her do something that would start a landslide of unbelief. Evolution eroded my faith once and I wasn't sure if this was going to be the same type of stumbling block. So I told her this:
"If this will erode your relationship with God, then don't do it. But consider how your decision will affect your debate group, consider how much time you and your group has spent on this, and consider how this topic was chosen by the class on a day you were missing, and that it's been two weeks."
And whaddya know, she debated. My guess is that she just wanted me to be assured that I didn't think she really believed in this. And that she wanted to scare me by throwing her parents' opinions at me. Honey, this isn't grade school anymore. I have no legal right to talk with your parents, anyway--it's your name on the college application, not theirs.
And anyway, if she reports to dear Mummy and Daddy everything I say, they probably already think I'm going to hell since I freely quote Harry Potter in class. Heaven forbid.