Do you clarify "no you may not have an extension" if the student emails with an excuse but doesn't specifically ask for one?

I'm going to give a little bit of context...

The majority of professors you find here are not the ones that don't care. I know these people exist but if you dig through the threads here, you will find that the majority of these people teach because they care about their students. And we're frustrated because we DO care. The majority of professors here jump through hoops to create interesting assignments and create policies that are designed to help students succeed. Hours of pedagogical choices and yet, some students who simply haven't met the objectives or done the work for the course expect to pass anyway and our integrity is on the line in whether we let that happen. We are damned if we do, damned if we don't.

If we are venting and frustrated, it's because we are tasked with the job of educating to the best of our ability while being handed almost impossible directives from up the food chain that run counts to these things. I'm getting emails that both yell at me for the number of students who failed my class (despite the fact that I reached out to every single one of them and have absolutely no control over the fact that they don't turn anything in) and also emails yelling at me for not grading harshly enough.

I make nearly impossible judgement calls based on the knowledge that while the majority of our students are genuinely good and honest people, some of them are simply full of shit and somehow part of my job is to make guesses knowing that any decision that I make (whether they are telling the truth or not) then opens up floodgates or identical emails that could potentially cost me my job.

Examples:

  1. I had a student this semester lie to me about his daughter being abducted. It was super messed up. But can you imagine how quickly I would lose my job if I stuck to policy and the student was telling the truth? I was fortunate that he showed his hand.
  2. In a much smaller instance, I had a student email me today after receiving a horrible grade on a paper who insists she submitted the wrong paper and this is CLEARLY the correct one. The metadata says she created it an hour before she emailed it to me. (The fact that I had to learn how to check metadata should tell you something about how often this happens). The assignment was due a week ago. Now... would her getting a few points back on that be the end of the world? No not really. But for every time I say yes to that, I will get 10 more when students learn that it works. She will do the same for every other professor she has. And not only does the student learn that cheating gets you ahead (which isn't a good life lesson), I could get in trouble for "academic integrity" and being inconsistent in my policies if I let her do it but not the other 10 people.

This is just a small example of what we have to deal with.

For the most part, we just try to be fair and consistent as best we can. I tend to be flexible if someone reaches out to me before a deadline and less generous after (without documentation anyway). I, for one, would welcome students reaching out to me before the deadline for a group project if they had classmates who weren't participating (in fact, I tell my students to do this). If they emailed me after the grade posts to complain about the situation, not much I can do because at that point, I can't intervene and/or change the output of what they gave me (I can only grade what I see) and reconsidering their grade will result in roughly 5 more emails with a similar excuse.

I really am sympathetic. I try to move heaven and earth to work with students who reach out to me while I can still help. But having to make these types of judgement calls puts me in a position where I risk my job if I'm not consistent. So probably be less pissed at your professors and more pissed at your classmates who think that duping their professors for a few extra points is preferable to you know... earning their grades.

/r/Professors Thread Parent