Why I Left Academia

This past fall, I left academia. I walked away from a tenured position, and I took a job as a researcher with the Illinois State Board of Education. The reason is straightforward enough: my family all live in Southwest Michigan, and my wife's family all live in Central Indiana so taking a job in Chicago meant that we could live much, much closer to all of them. We've already enjoyed daytrips and lots of visitors.

I want to offer a few clarifications. First, I didn't change careers because I had become disillusioned with higher education. I loved being a professor, and I might do it again some day (if possible). Second, I didn't leave my job because of my employer--mostly. My colleagues at Georgia College were wonderful. I had several complaints about the local administrators, but generally, they were all doing their best. The University System of Georgia and the State of Georgia, on the other hand, suffered from many, many problems. I won't delineate them here, but suffice to say, the USG and the state are victims of their own politics. Still, this, by itself, was not enough to cause my exit. Finally, we didn't move because we didn't like Georgia. Milledgeville was a nice place to work, and we loved living in Athens. We will miss Athen's culture and all of the friends that we made in Georgia. Commuting nine hours a week wasn't sustainable, though, especially as the kids are getting older and more involved in extracurriculars. (Oh, the irony of moving to a major metropolitan area from a rural area to cut down on the commute!)

The transition was very difficult, but we are finally feeling settled and are happy. More updates to come.

Presidential Listening Tour

Our new president recently did the typical "listening tour." Of course, the scheduled times were predictably inconvenient and brief. There was, however, an online submission process. I'm posting my letter to the president below.

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Dear President Cox,

I am sorry that I haven’t yet had a chance to meet you and that I was not available to attend our designated listening session. I did, however, want to take a moment to share some broad concerns.

The past several years, especially the last two, have been difficult for everyone on campus and in our community. As faculty, it has been difficult not to feel exploited and demoralized. The Regents, USG, and, at times, even GC administrators have signaled their disregard for us. Here are just a few examples of the injustices we’ve endured: 

• being forced to abide firearms in our classrooms

• the [unilateral] reimagining of a more limited, advisory role for the University Senate

• being forced, under threat of termination, to do in-person instruction during a pandemic

• being forced to answer to a state legislator who demanded to know and compiled a list of which of our programs and classes teach Critical Race Theory

• repeatedly not receiving merit pay

• having tenure gutted

At no point has anyone intervened on the behalf of faculty (let alone staff, students, or common sense) in these matters. No one in a position of authority stood up and said, This is wrong. I would respectfully encourage you to take immediate, ongoing, and active steps to repair this damage, and I humbly ask you to prepare to take action on our behalf when required in the future. There is much trust to be rebuilt.

Sincerely,

Brad Koch

Associate Professor of Sociology

COVID on Campus, a Fall 2020 Retrospective

The University System of Georgia (USG) forced faculty, staff, and students into in-person classroom instruction for the Fall 2020 semester. To my knowledge, there has been no indication that any high-level campus administrators at Georgia College (GC) raised any concerns with the Chancellor, Board of Regents, or anyone else at the USG over the wisdom of this initiative. Over the semester, I have regularly updated data visualization of my campus's COVID-19 cases. In-person classes ended yesterday (11/24). Below are those charts:

Here are some facts, findings, and dates:

• More than 12% of students (727) taking at least one in-person course disclosed a positive COVID test during the semester.
• 36 employees disclosed a positive COVID test during the semester.
• The peak reporting of new cases occurred on 8/24 with 79 new cases, 16 days after students moved into on-campus housing and 12 days after classes began.
• The peak of active infections (i.e. total cases 14-day window) occurred on 8/31 with 539 cases (9% of students [536] taking at least one in-person course), 23 days after students moved into on-campus housing and 19 days after classes began.
• GC president, Steve Dorman, threatened students with suspension over non-compliance with university policy on 8/25.
• GC Student Life announced the creation of a COVID CARE Response Team on 9/8.
• GC Student Health Services began offering no-cost COVID-19 saliva tests on 9/11.
• USG chancellor, Steve Wrigley, announced that we will "stay the course" on 9/15.
• Under remarkably similar circumstances (i.e. 700 student cases on ~4000-student campus), SUNY-Oneonta president, Barbara Jean Morris, resigned on 10/15.

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A few notes:

• The data are primarily confirmed test results volunteered by students and employees, which means the actual numbers are certainly higher than reported.
• At no point before or during the semester did the administration conduct any systematic contact tracing.
• The administration neither required nor offered testing of students or employees before returning to campus for the semester.
• 5859 students took at least one in-person course during the semester.
• The administration published "employee" test results but did not distinguish between faculty and staff, and I have been unable to find a total count of current employees on campus.

Rethinking Honors Education

My small, public liberal arts campus just transformed an honors program into an honors college, helped along with a very healthy donation from a wealthy emeritus professor. Over the years, I have taught a handful of honors sections of a frosh-level course. To be honest, they have been among the most rewarding teaching experiences of my career. They were what I imagined teaching at a liberal arts college would be. The students were enthusiastic. They wanted to be in the room. They interacted with me and with each other. They welcomed challenge--at least as much we humans can actually welcome that kind of thing. They were hardworking. Frankly, though, most of them were no more or less intelligent than their counterparts in non-honors sections, as far as I could tell. I don't have systematically-collected data to confirm this, but the honors students seemed to be disproportionately white, middle-class, and women.

I have found myself asking several questions about honors education (HE) over the years, though:

1. What is the purpose of HE?
2. Are honors students better off having HE?
3. What do HE programs mean for students from marginalized backgrounds, who are not typically in HE?

Here are some answers that I've worked through:

1. Disappointingly, I've yet to hear why we do HE articulated clearly. Inasmuch as there is explanation, it draws on much of the same mission, values, and buzzwords that are used on our campus to articulate what we do more broadly.
2. I suspect that the kind of student who would qualify for HE is the kind of student who is likely to be successful with or without HE.
3. My fear is that HE diverts resources from those who would benefit most to those who need it the least.

What the literature in the sociology of education shows is that education, at least as we currently do it, is not an equalizer; instead, it does social reproduction. Honors education seems like a quintessential example. Imagine how much more of an effect that million-dollar donation could have had for at-risk students (i.e. BIPOC, lower-class, first-generation, etc.). It's difficult for me to justify. While honors students are likely to succeed in college and beyond without much help from us, at-risk students benefit from any help that we can offer.

Belmont and Me

My alma mater is back in the news so I wanted to take a minute to reflect.

I made the decision to attend Belmont University because of its Music Business program, small campus size, and liberal arts mission. I made that decision despite the fact that Belmont was owned by the Southern Baptist Convention and imposed its brand of Conservative Evangelical morality on its students. When I was there (1998-2002), we could only have co-ed visitors in our dorm rooms during narrow daytime hours, and the guests had to check themselves in with an RA. We had to deadbolt the door open, and each party was required to keep at least one foot on the ground at all times. (Can we pause for a minute to note how boring Evangelical sex must be? Anything beyond heterosexual, missionary-style intercourse is somehow unimaginable.) To be clear, these rules were barely enforced, with most RA's happy to look the other way. I had been raised in a conservative religion, though, and even as I was actively questioning my religious identity, these kinds of mores seemed equal parts ridiculous and familiar.

The Belmont I experienced was quite schizophrenic. There was the Belmont known for music, music business, art, and theatre, and there was the Belmont for the Christians. To be clear, there was plenty of overlap individually. I, for one, was a "Christian," though certainly not an Evangelical, but there really were two differentiated communities of students. I never experienced them to be in tension. Everyone coexisted. People just filtered into their own groups. On day one, I found my people. We hung out at "the smoke pit," a square of benches nestled between two dorms where we would all smoke cigarettes. We were misfits and malcontents. One of us was genderqueer (though we didn't yet have that language to describe them). Campus was dry, and that part was strictly enforced, but we quickly found the skinny on where the off-campus keggers were and which bars downtown didn't check ID's.

I was among the first classes who enjoyed a change from required "Chapel hours" (i.e. forced participation in worship services) to required "Convocation hours" (i.e. attendance at extracurricular academic or altruistic events). I was happy not to have to sit awkwardly through a foreign church service, but the convocation experiences were often patronizing, boring, and unhelpful.

Academics were different. I had heard from professors that they had been required to sign a statement that they were Christian and had to provide a signed letter from their clergy to confirm this. To be sure, not all denominations were counted as Christian. Mormons, for example, didn't make the cut. The facutly, though, did not take this requirement seriously, and it was easy enough for people I knew who were atheist and agnostic to convince a minister to write a letter. I never witnessed a professor proselytize to students. To the contrary, I recall several instances where faculty presented critiques of orthodoxy. It's true that we were required to take a semester of "Old Testament History" and "New Testament History." This was a requirement that I had absolutely dreaded, but I was surprised to find both courses academically rigorous, intellectually illuminating, and quite critical. In short, they were college classes, not a backdoor attempt to evangelize. Ironically, I found myself much more comfortable in those courses than many of my Evangelical Christain peers. I ended up with a PhD minor in Religious Studies in part because of this exposure.

My time at Belmont was not without controversy, though. A beloved adjunct in my major program came out as gay during my junior year. He did so knowing full well that it would mean losing his job. It is one of the great regrets of my life that I didn't do more anything to fight for him. I know that it's not what he wanted of me, but perhaps it's what I needed of myself.

Since I graduated, much has changed at Belmont. The university bought itself away from the Southern Baptist Convention. While it retained an identity as generically Christain (read: Evangelical), it would be unaffiliated denominationally. I had expected that this was in part to loosen many of the conservative restrictions that I had endured, but I'm not sure that's actually happened. The campus hosted a presidential debate in 2008 and will again in 2020. In the fall of 2010, Belmont gained national attention for firing a gay women's soccer coach. While I was utterly disgusted by the administration's actions, I was proud of the way the faculty and students responded. A year later, the university expanded spousal benefits to same-sex partners. In 2016, Belmont expelled a racist student. Meanwhile, the size of the campus has expanded dramatically as the university continues to gobble surrounding real estate. Most disappointing, in the fall of 2014, Belmont declared itself no longer a small liberal arts college, as the student body had doubled in a dozen years. I don't recognize the school I see in the alumni mailers I now receive, but I also don't recognize that kid who chose to go to such a school all those years ago. Both Belmont and I have changed. As a father of two young children, I can't imagine encouraging them to consider Belmont as an option. While I cannot say that I regret my time at Belmont, I have sometimes regretted the actions of Belmont. Like most institutions, mine is complicated, and so are my emotions toward it.

Here Is Your Grade; Nice Knowing You

Over the first five weeks of class, I work hard to develop a good rapport with my students, but the realities of higher ed bureaucracy dash much of that. I'm a relatively charismatic guy, and I try to present new ideas in a surprising and engaging manner. My hope is that my approach challenges the socialization the students received in school to view authority in traditional and/or rational-legal ways so that they can instead appreciate the new professional-client authority that should be more dominant in college. (I've written about this before.)  All of that is spoiled, however, when I am required to give the students feedback. The first time students are graded, the goodwill of the charismatic/professional-client relationship is largely erased, and we are relegated back to an instrumental, bureaucratic interaction. Short of eliminating the bureaucratic requirement for grades, as some peer institutions have actually done, I'm not sure how to avoid this. Regardless, it makes me sad.

Class Not Dismissed

Anyone who's spent much time in the classroom as an educator has inevitably seen the phenomenon of students packing up their materials prematurely. A couple weeks ago, I was showing a documentary in class, and like clockwork, someone started packing up with five minutes left in class. This, of course, prompted several others to start packing up. The sound of one person rustling with her belongings is largely ignorable, but several people messing with their stuff is distracting. It occurred to me that this is actually a good example of the social generally. One individual's behavior is inconsequential, but patterned collective behavior has ramifications. For example, if one person opts not to vote, it won't change the election; if many people don't vote, it has a measurable effect on the outcome. If one person drives an SUV, no problem; if many people drive SUV's, it accelerates global warming and increases the rate of fatalities.

Owning My Summer

I did a bit of an experiment over the summer, and as I'm ready to get back into the fall routine next week, I thought I'd share. Like most faculty, I am on a 10-month appointment. That means that I am technically only employed by the college between August and May. I am on my own for June and July. Traditionally, academics have used the summer to do research. I find this arrangement highly problematic[1]. Regardless, there is an administrative creep, whereby students, colleagues, and administrators increasingly expect faculty to be responsive during the summer[2]. To hedge this a bit, I set up the following automatic reply from my work email account:

I am away from campus conducting research and will only be checking email sporadically until August.

Indeed, I did my best to only check my work email once a week. I'll admit that I didn't always hold to this goal, though. I was quite adamant, however, about not checking email during the two weeks during which I was on vacation with my family. Sadly, people continue to send email, whether I'm checking it or not, and I often had dozens of emails waiting for me on the days when I did check.

Overall, my approach, the auto-reply and checking email infrequently, was pretty successful. I will do it again next summer for sure. I made a lot of progress with my new research project, though not as much as I had hoped. More importantly, I spent a lot of time with my daughter and wife. Starting next week, I'll get back to the grind. I will not be checking my work email on the weekends, though.

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[1] The roots of this, I believe, are more political than anything. John and Jane Q. Public think that professors are teachers and are not fully informed about the research and service requirements of the job. Since teaching generally happens between August and May, those are the months during which, from that uninformed perspective, professors are working, and paying them during the summer when most are not teaching is unjustifiable. While it's true that most of us are actually paid a salary over those ten months that amounts to a fair 12-month salary, the symbolism is important: what I do is neither understood nor valued. I have found that the psychological effects of this are that I am not as motivated during June and July as I might otherwise be if my employer signalled to me that my productivity during that 17% of the year is as valuable as my productivity during the other 83%. That may sound almost adolescent, but I would argue that it is only human.

[2] There is a quote that the interwebs attribute to Bob Carter that goes, "Poor planning on your part does not necessitate an emergency on mine." I love this sentiment, but I think it might be a bit simplistic. Like us, administrators have their bosses, too, so the "poor planning" is possibly more institutional or organizational than it is a personal failing. The problem is created not by any given administrator but by the bureaucratic system of administration itself in which it is literally people's jobs to create work for others and to delegate tasks to subordinates. Because capitalism. Thanks, Obama.

Take Me to Church: Re-purposing the Sociology Club

It's that time of year again, and we're gearing up for the start of a new semester. I enjoyed an afternoon "retreat" with my colleagues earlier this week, and it was very productive and helped me to do the mental transition from summer mode to school mode. One item on our agenda was how best to help our students with the mental and emotional fallout from studying a field as heavy as sociology. We are a notorious downer of a discipline, focusing on poverty, racism, sexism, etc., and all of that negativity can have troubling effects on those of us who do this daily.

I had a spark of inspiration as my colleagues were talking about the creeping depression (clinical or otherwise) that affects our undergrads. How can we teach our students about the social ills of the world without shoving them off the cliff of melancholy? As a sociologist of religion, I connected what I know of Evangelical Protestants/Sectarian Christians and sociology majors. Evangelicals are unique, according to Chris Smith, for a kind of paradoxical social orientation. On the one hand, they are instructed to be leery of "the world" (i.e. the mainstream culture). Secular influence is seen as, at best, a collection of temptations to be treated with extreme caution or, at worst, an irredeemable pit of evil and depravity. On the other hand, they are required to engage with the world, to evangelize and proselytize. In other words, the world is bad but unavoidable. The sociological twist is that this paradox allows them to generate incredible in-group solidarity. Their affiliation rescues them from inevitable acedia.

Perhaps, I thought, we could replicate this model in some secular manner for our students. Right now, our students get a lot of the "world is bad" stuff from us, and to some extent, they also get the "fix the world" engagement stuff as well, but what they so far haven't gotten is a place to generate the solidarity necessary to sustain those orientations. Enter the sociology club. Too often our students imagine the sociology club to be a kind of extracurricular classroom, where they continue the academics they started in the classroom, but one of my colleagues suggested that, given the right direction from us as faculty and the basis of some form of secular rituals (i.e. behaviors), the sociology club could serve as a place for our majors to be reminded not just of their shared ideas (i.e. beliefs) but also of their shared identity (i.e. belonging). Our hope is that the social-psychological effects of this will mirror those among Evangelicals. I'll keep you posted.

Death by a Million Paper Cuts

Without getting into the details, I have enjoyed a window recently into the root of the tensions between faculty and administration. The gist is that some administrators wanted to add another bureaucratic requirement for student midterm grade reporting. I think, to their mind, it was a simple request and would take faculty only an extra half an hour or so a semester to do. The problem, though, is that we are asked to do many, many, many simple and brief things like this in the course of our work. It is no one thing that is necessarily unreasonable; it is the sum total of all the little things that become unreasonable together. It's death by a million paper cuts. For administrators, this is their job, but faculty are supposed to teach and research and serve. These bureaucratic requirements are intrusions on or distractions from, not the substance of, our work.

Memories of Lake Michigan

I grew up in Saint Joseph, Michigan, a small town on the shore of Lake Michigan. I remember going away to college in Tennessee, and suddenly, the absence of The Lake became palpable to me. I had taken it, in all its grandeur, for granted for all of my first 19 years. I was reminded of this a couple weeks ago listening to one of my favorite podcasts, The Writer's Almanac, as is part of my daily morning routine:

Heather McHugh..., born in San Diego, California (1948). She said: "I have always lived on waterfronts. If you live on the edge of an enormous mountain or an enormous body of water, it's harder to think of yourself as being so important. That seems useful to me, spiritually."

My experience of The Lake wasn't quite as McHugh describes it. For me, it was less humbling than it was confining or, perhaps, embracing. In Middle Tennessee, I had 360 degrees in which to possibly travel; in St. Joe, I had roughly half that. Instead of feeling limiting, it felt comforting. I knew that there were possibilities out there, but as a youth, I did not have to bear the anxiety that can come from the overwhelming sense of endless possibilities.

The allegory is not lost on me here, that hometowns can be simultaneously nurturing and limiting and that college opens one to an expanse of unimagined opportunities. My experience, though, was much more material and much less transcendent. I simply felt The Lake.

An Apology for a Consumer Model of Higher Ed—Sorta

Increasingly, administrators in higher education have been entertaining the claim that students should be treated less as students traditionally have and more like “consumers.”* That generally has meant that institutions—including professors—are expected to be more responsive to the demands of students (and their parents). There is a seeming logic to this in that students (and/or their parents) are paying a lot of money in tuition and fees and should have a say in the “product,” that is the social and educational experiences, “sold” by colleges. In our neoliberal world, colleges exist in a very crowded “marketplace”; if one college, for whatever reason, isn’t responding to one “customer’s” “demands,” there are many, many other institutions ready to “supply” a “competing” “product” that can satisfy those “demands.”

Like many in higher education, I am leery of this new consumer model of education. This has caused many of us to resist its associated reforms quite vociferously. I would like to suggest, perhaps, that our opposition has been somewhat misdirected. The problem with the consumer model of higher ed is not so much that education is treated as a commodity that is exchanged for money with consumers; instead, the problem is whom we imagine the consumer to be. There are several beneficiaries of higher education. One is indeed an individual student. I would argue that the larger beneficiary is the public. In the US, states that have higher levels of average education tend to be more economically vibrant; those places benefit on a macro-level. In other words, both highly and less educated people benefit from the “product” that colleges and universities “sell.”

In the individual-as-consumer model, individuals are responsible for the cost of their education, logically, since they are the immediate beneficiaries of their education. Any state involvement in this exchange (e.g. state funding or federal student loan subsidization) is seen as meddling with the magic of the markets and, thus, should be limited or even eliminated. In light of this conceptualization, it seems obvious why states have been steadily decreasing their financial support of public universities (even if they retain their right to meddle politically in curriculum, governance, etc.). In the public-as-consumer model, the state bears the bulk of the responsibility for the cost of education, logically, because the public is the immediate beneficiary of education. If states are not highly involved in this exchange, individuals are expected to pay for a product from which others benefit; in other words, the student pays her tuition even though her peers who did not attend college get a benefit from her increased education. In light of this conceptualization, it is only just that the public, represented by the state, pay for public universities—arguably even to the point of making higher education freely available to qualifying individuals.

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h/t to Karen Sternheimer for her post that sparked this one.

* - I am (somewhat annoyingly) using scare-quotes throughout to highlight the business/economic/corporate-speak that has crept into the way we talk and think about this topic.

Using Macros in MS Word for Grading Student Papers

I have found that using macros in Word saves me a lot of time and effort in grading student papers. If you are unfamiliar with macros, here is a good place to get started. Before I read a word in any of the students' papers for a given assignment, I run a macros that put them all in the proper formatting I require in the syllabus. I also employ separate macros to identify and highlight citation or other requirements specific to any given assignment. Coding or recording a macros is not without its problems, but even with those issues, I've found the investment to be well worth it.

Death to PowerPoint (at Least for Most Uses)!

I regularly warn my students not to abuse PowerPoint and other presentation software and applications. (Don't get me started on Prezi!) I often assign these two readings. (UPDATE 8/25/16: a third reading.) Here are a few thoughts on the subject that I often share with them:

• Fancy animation, formatting, and backgrounds are distractions. The focus should be on your ideas. If things start flying around the screen, my first thought is to wonder why you don't believe the substance of your own presentation is engaging enough to hold my attention.
• The point of an oral presentation is for you to tell me (and sometimes to show me) things. If you ask me to read a bunch of text off of the screen, you might as well have just handed me a copy of your paper rather than stood up in front of me, wasting my time.
• Short of blocks of text, bullet points that outline your argument can be helpful--for you, the presenter. If you're an effective presenter, your audience should never need to see those notes. By all means, print them out and hold them in your hand, but don't project them for the rest of us.
• Never turn your back to your audience to read from the presentation. If you find yourself doing that as you practice, you're ill prepared.

Course Goals and Outcomes: We Can't Measure It All

Increasingly, we are being encouraged and even required by administrators to align teaching goals directly to course assignments. I think it is OK not to do this--at least not all of them. Not everything I teach has to be measured. Think about it this way: if I give an exam in a class, do I ask a question about each and every concept that I teach and believe to be important? Of course I don't! That exam would take at least as long as the time that we spend together in class! Instead, I test on a few select concepts as a sample of what I taught. Why would our course, curriculum, or major goals be any different?

Why I'm on a First-name Basis with My Students

...despite the Privilege.

I've been waiting to respond to this essay for a while. Here it is, warts and all.

First, let me offer context. My social location is the height of privilege. Everything below should be read in that light. This is not mansplaining but a dialogue.

Students come to college having been taught in primary and secondary education to respect their teachers because of their traditional and/or rational-legal (a/k/a bureaucratic) authority. In order to redefine the kind of authority to professional-client that is endemic in and essential to higher ed, I ask students to call me by my first name instead of with a title that aligns with a bureaucratic office (e.g. "Professor" or "Doctor"). This informality highlights that my authority rests in my expertise, not in customs or rules. (See [1] for a thorough treatment of these kinds authorities.)

I have always been of the view that traditional and bureaucratic authority in the classroom is a hindrance. This is not to deny that there is a power differential. As a professor, I hold a lot of power over my students, not the least of which is my ability to assign grades and, ultimately, to bestow or withhold a degree. (I go to great lengths, though, to craft syllabi that remove as much subjectivity from the process as possible--or at least to lay as bare as possible where my expert status affords subjectivity.) The students in my classes are adults, however, and I treat them as such. I am not the high school teacher; I will not coddle them or hold their hands. They are fully capable of being self-sufficient. In secondary education, it is the teacher's responsibility that the student learns; in post-secondary education, that responsibility belongs to the student. Because of this, I see no need for deference.

I do not agree that it is our job to teach students how to behave in a professional setting, as Prof. Gulliver claims. That is the creep of corporate influence into academia. College is not--or at least shouldn't be--job training. Regardless, behavior in professional settings has been becoming increasingly casual for decades. Most employees are on a first-name basis with their boss. Arguing that college has a duty to professionalize students would require that we help students transition from their high-school habit of calling authority figures Mr., Mrs., etc. to having the bravery to see themselves as closer in status to their superiors and setting aside the titles.

There absolutely is a problem for women professors, professors of color, and instructors of otherwise marginalized identities, and we should do everything to address the cultural and structural realities that cause these problems. But I, "the cool white guy" doing my best to meet my students in a place that will best facilitate their edification, am not the problem. I am an ally, not an enemy.

I think Prof. Gulliver underestimates her capacity for being the "cool" professor. What stops women from being the "cool" professor, too? Using your first name removes an easy opportunity for douchy undergrads to challenge authority. If anything, it opens up an opportunity to be surprised by those who find it hard or impossible to call a superior by her first name.

Finally, let me close by saying that I very much appreciate Prof. Gulliver's essay and I continue to wrestle with her arguments. I hope the dialogue continues.

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[1] Pace, Judith. 2003. "Managing the Dilemmas of Professional and Bureaucratic Authority in a High School English Class." Sociology of Education 76(January): 37-52

Irrationality and Symbolic Fear, College Campus Edition

Back in January, I was required by our university system to sit through the hour-long Plan-Prepare-React training. Right at the top of the hour, our presenter told us in no uncertain terms that we were more likely to struck by lightning than to experience any of the scenarios that were to be covered. She then launched unflinchingly into the training (which included instructions to be on constant alert and to imagine a violent altercation at every new place I go). I joked on social media: "When can I expect my state-mandated SALSA™ (Survive a Lightning Strike Alive) training?" The answer of course is never. None of this is about rationality. This is the kind of hypocrisy that drives a person who teaches critical thinking and sociology absolutely batty.

Guns Are (Likely) Coming to Georgia Higher Ed (and How Faculty Should Respond)

The stage is set for guns to be allowed on college campuses in Georgia. As I have blogged before, I have a longstanding policy of not allowing guns in my classrooms or office. As far as I am concerned, this policy will not change, regardless of the law. Nevertheless, if House Bill 859 passes the State Senate and is signed by Gov. Deal as is currently expected, guns will be allowed around me, my colleagues, and my students, which is unacceptable for two major reasons.

First, the purported spirit of HB 859, that it "is about personal safety and the ability of Georgians to defend themselves as needed," is not rooted in reality. Study after study has shown that the presence and prevalence of guns is correlated with a decrease in safety, not an increase. This is essentially settled science. At the very least, HB 859 seems to violate OSHA regulations, if not reason.

Second, our lawmakers and governor lack the courage of their own convictions as they continue to restrict firearms and other weapons from the State Capitol, the Governor's office, and the State Supreme Court, among other government buildings. If our elected officials actually do believe that permitted carriers of concealed firearms increase safety, they should move to immediately rectify the inconsistency of the law so that guns could be carried into the galleries of the House, Senate, and Supreme Court; into congresspersons' offices; and indeed, into the Governor's office. If, as I suspect, our lawmakers will refuse to allow guns in their place of work, this belies what they claim is the motivation of HB 859.

Many would note that the business of governing is a contentious matter that makes it more vulnerable to acts of violence, especially to weapons capable of mass carnage from a distance, such as firearms. I would agree, and for those same reasons, firearms also have no place in colleges and universities. My job regularly requires that I teach about and moderate discussions involving highly contentious issues, such as abortion, capital punishment, crime, climate change, gender, homosexuality, immigration, poverty, racism, religion, terrorism, war, and indeed, gun control itself. If lawmakers are uncomfortable debating these issues in the presence of guns, they should not require me, my colleagues, and students to do so.

Here is my proposal:
As professors and instructors, we should respond to HB 859 by simply taking rational steps to protect the safety of ourselves and our students, that is to hold our classes and office hours in the few remaining places where firearms are still logically not permitted, in government buildings and offices, and indeed in the State Capitol itself! By making ourselves visible in first the statehouse and then in local halls, we can draw attention to the hypocrisies noted above. We ask for nothing more than the legal consideration that governmental figures bestow on themselves.

Why Facebook Is Better than Your Learning Management System

Facebook Groups are better than your institution's learning management system (LMS) (e.g. Blackboard, Moodle, Sakai, D2L, Canvas, etc.). Here are just three reasons why:

1. Your students are already on it. Yes, Facebook is losing cred with the kids, but the kids are still on it. If some other social media site replaces Facebook in the future, that platform will likely be better than your institution's LMS, too.
2. Your students already know how to use it. There is no learning curve. LMS's, on the other hand, take time to figure out and are not a part of post-collegiate life.
3. You likely are already on it and know how to use it. Loss of productivity is death by a thousand paper cuts. There is rarely one major time-suck to blame; instead, little bits of our time are eaten away by small, seemingly innocuous requirements, for example, having to teach oneself how to use a new LMS whenever they are regularly upgraded, when outside consultants convince your administrators to sign a contract for a competing system, or when one changes institutional affiliation.

"But, Facebook doesn't have the functionality that my institution's LMS does," you might be saying at this point. That's true, but let me offer a few workarounds.

• Upload spreadsheets to share assignment scores and grades. You can easily maintain anonymity and mind FERPA by having your students assign themselves PIN's at the start of the semester.
• Use Google Forms for quizzes and tests as necessary. Even better, don't give quizzes and tests.
• Use FB Polls to informally gauge student knowledge and comprehension. It's quick, it's interactive, and frankly, it's fun.

Of course, the mileage you get may vary.

Learning Is--and Should Be--Frustrating

Learning should be frustrating. You are literally changing the wiring of your brain to make sense of things that you couldn't have understood previously. That takes effort. If it's easy, you're not really learning. As an educator, few things are as annoying as when students get angry about being frustrated. That's the point! My job is to usher you through that frustration, not to make you comfortable.