UNC Professors Threaten to Withhold Final Grades From Students Until ‘Silent Sam’ Demands Met

CHAPEL HILL – The Social Justice Warriors at the University of North Carolina are beefing up their battle plans to include withholding final grades from students until their ‘demands‘ are met regarding the ‘Silent Sam’ Confederate statue.

“Graduate teaching assistants and some faculty members at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill are planning to “withhold grading” over the way in which the university is handling a heavily protested Confederate monument.

The Workers Union at UNC announced via Twitter its support for faculty members and teaching assistants withholding students’ end-of-semester grades “until certain demands are met.”

“Many UNC workers, students & community members have decried the BOT [Board of Trustees] & Chancellor Folt’s proposal to relocate Silent Sam w/ no thought for student safety,” the union said. “Opponents of Silent Sam have asked faculty & TAs to withhold grading finals and assignments until certain demands are met.”

It is coercion plain and simple, and a violation of student’s First Amendment rights according to UNC’s provost. The faux concern for ‘student safety’ is a case of absolutely backward logic. The only ones endangering anyone’s safety are the Radical Leftists that think violence and destruction of property are fixtures of popular discourse.

“Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Bob Blouin’s Thursday email to university deans came amid a so-called “grading strike” by faculty members and graduate assistants at the university in protest of the UNC Board of Trustees’ approval of a proposal aiming to erect a $5 million history center to house a Confederate statue that protesters tore down in August, as Campus Reform previously reported.

“This afternoon it came to my attention that some instructors have used their roles in the classroom to ask students to take a stand on the strike,” Blouin said in the email, a copy of which Campus Reform obtained. “The University has received student and parent complaints. Such actions have been interpreted as coercion and an exploitation of the teacher-student relationship and in fact are a violation of students’ First Amendment rights as well as federal law.”

One would think that brazenly violating the law is something teachers and mentors would stay away from, but not when it comes to the hysterical opponents of ‘Silent Sam.’

What’s worse is that while the faculty group claims to be concerned for the students, their actions stand to seriously disrupt those students in their academic careers. Graduation, scholarships, military commissions, student loans – all could be at risk due to a delay in final grades, according to the provost.

“Our students are entitled to receive their grades in a timely manner. It is especially critical for the students preparing to graduate next Sunday, as well as the thousands of students whose scholarships, grants, loans, visa status, school transfers, job opportunities, and military commissions may be imperiled because lack of grades threaten[s] their eligibility,” the provost stated. “The proposed strike exposes the University and individuals who withhold grades to legal claims for the harm they cause to students.”

Fortunately the provost is not mincing words in response to this plan, warning any faculty that they will face serious consequences for purposely withholding final grades as a form of protest.

Those consequences should start with losing their job. Faculty and teaching positions at a public university are for teaching (and grading) students in particular subject matters consistent with the school’s listed instructional responsibilities. Taxpayers should not be required to support the salaries of instructors that use the position as a platform for social justice whining, especially when it negatively affects the very students they are charged with educating.

Students and parents are rightly furious about these threats, and likely sick and tired of the crazy antics of the Radical Left when it comes to contrived controversies.

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