Political Philosophy With Special Reference to Murphy

by Anthony Ward.

After a fair bit of digging around it appears that something rather funny has been going on in Pols 213, 'Political Philosophy with special reference to Marx'. Though the problem now seems to be resolved, its worthwhile describing it as an indication of things that do go on, and of what can be done about them.

Pols 213 was taught over the last few years by Chris Wainwright, who has the reputation of being a bit of a left-winger. The way he organised the course, and the marks given, were the subject of some controversy in the School of Political Science and Administration. Chris has now resigned from the Department, and produced a final report of a course questionnaire which was very critical of present teaching practices within the University. In particular he disliked the formal 'I know better than you', style of lectures, and the system of final exams. Consequently, Pols 213 Last year was run on a tutorial system, and internally assessed. When the registry was asking around last year to include courses in the pre-set time examination timetable, Chris Wainwright informed them that as Pols 213 was internally assessed it required no exam time to be allocated to it. Consequently the course was listed in the timetable as internally assessed. Further to this, when the student reps. on Prof. Board made severe criticisms of the preset timetable in February, the Registry said that as far as possible it would ensure that no new courses would be included in the timetable. This undertaking accepted the reps, point that if students were to be constrained by the timetable, the staff should also be constrained.

Which brings us to the major actor of the piece, Associate Professor Murphy, who took over Pols 213 this year, was Head of the School last year and, it appears, did not get along too well with Mr. Wainwright. As far as this course is concerned the major disagreement was over internal assessment, which Prof. Murphy appears to dislike intensely. Consequently, when the first meeting of the course took place this year. Prof. Murphy informed the class that it would be assessed by an exam worth 100% in either the midyear or end-of-the-year exam period. Mid-year was most acceptable, but some in the class also asked for debate on the decision to have only one piece of work assessed for the final grade. Apparently Prof. Murphy's reply was that debate would take place, but it would make no difference to the decision. Somewhat annoyed by this, several students complained to the Students' Association. Noting that Prof. Murphy's plans seemed to constitute a breach of the regulation that all exams worth more than 40% should be run by the Registry (which is a good idea as it ensures consistency in the handling of time-tabling and the handling of such queries as aegrotats), John Roseveare (the SRC Co-ordinator) wrote to the Registrar conveying the students displeasure on March 4, After much discussion Professor Campbell, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, ruled that the assessment would have to be changed. When he discussed this matter with the Deputy Registrar, Prof. Murphy apparently agreed to discuss the matter with his students.

In view of the fact that students must be notified how their course is to be assessed within two weeks of its start, and it was now six weeks into the course, one would think that discussion with the students was the least courtesy that could be paid. However, Prof. Murphy on April 10 told students a new form of assessment. There was no discussion of alternative forms that could be investigated. The new plan consisted of two tests, worth 40% each, within two days of each other at the end of the course, and a 20% weighting to an 'objective test', the date of which was not set as books required for it had not arrived at this stage.

On hearing this, John Roseveare again wrote to the Registry, and Vice-Chancellor and others. He pointed out these issues and requested a discussion of the new scheme. Consequently, the Deputy Registrar went to the next meeting of the course and, after a little discussion, gained a fewchanges in the system of assessment. At this stage students in the course seemed rather apathetic about the whole thing, and so any further possible advantage that could have been gained was lost. Nonetheless, the fact that the assessment system was changed indicates that students do have some ways of changing unfair systems.

John R. Comments:

Tony's story is both accurate and timely but it does contain two causes for comment. Firstly, while it is true that I wrote to the Registrar early on in the course pointing out apparent breaches of regulations I did so because these were brought to my attention by the aforesaid Ward. Maybe Tony decided that his name had appeared in this issue often enough already and so neglected to mention this: no matter. Secondly I need no longer look for someone to write my P.R. releases for me. Gee thanks Tony.