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What I got from his post wasn't that he deserved a better grade, but more willingness by the professor to field his questions. If other students felt this way, I really can't trust the author's claim that his low evaluation score was solely due to the fault of his students. Seems pretty unfair...

The cheating, although not excusable, could very well be partially blamed on the professor.

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I don't understand some of the negative responses directed to the professor (both in this case and in others; they seem to represent a popular sentiment). Why isn't blaming professors for cheaters analogous to blaming rape victims for being insufficiently vigilant against rape?

Because professors are in a position of authority over their students, and part of their job is to evaluate the students. Thus preventing or detecting cheating (for example, by changing the structure of the assignments, or using various plagiarism-detection tools) is legitimately the professor's responsibility (though not solely theirs; the school and the department are responsible for setting policies, and handling violations after the professor detects them; and of course the individual students bear the ultimately responsibility to not cheat!)

"Why isn't blaming professors for cheaters analogous to blaming rape victims for being insufficiently vigilant against rape?"

I don't think the analogy holds well. The point is that a professor is supposed to help his/her students when they have questions. If they don't do this, they increase the probability of cheating occurring. It's less of "blaming" and more "noting" that this happens. If the professor is partially ignoring this duty, he/she is partly to blame. (I'm not saying that happened here, just explaining what I think @reason's logic is).

All we have at this point is the word of someone who admits technological disinclination, says he received a poor grade, and publicly accuses Panos of racism. There's no real evidence here that any other student felt this way, nor that there was any substantial number of them (he doesn't even provide a number).

Panos has provided documentation, reasonable theories, refrained from naming students, and put his own reputation on the line. "nyustern" has simply whined about perceived slights, thrown anonymous accusations of racism, and vaguely claimed that other unnamed and unnumbered students felt the same way.

nyustern is free to voice his thoughts and feelings, but I don't think he should be free to anonymously throw serious accusations at Panos with no evidence.

There might be a serious personality conflict here, it's also possible Panos was a jerk. But at this point we have only the inherently biased word of a purported student who feels they didn't get the grade they deserved.

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