{"id":3811,"date":"2012-02-11T21:35:32","date_gmt":"2012-02-12T04:35:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3811"},"modified":"2012-02-11T21:35:32","modified_gmt":"2012-02-12T04:35:32","slug":"thought-crime-in-the-writing-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3811","title":{"rendered":"Thought Crime in the Writing Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

I taught writing for twenty years. I heard some shocking stuff\u2014especially in the “Creative Nonfiction” class, which occasionally produced some, shall we say, highly confessional<\/em> material.<\/p>\n

And there was one outright psycho student who, lucky for me, fixated on a different professor as the cause of all her problems\u2014not to mention accusing him in her writing (for me) of being a Satanic serial killer\u2014and showed up at his house one night at 2 a.m. with a large knife.<\/p>\n

I even had freewriting assignments that might have resembled “a place for a writer to try out ideas and record impressions and observations,” [containing] “freewriting\/brainstorming” and “creative entries.”<\/a><\/p>\n

But no one ever used his or her journal to discuss his or her sexual attraction for me (sigh).<\/p>\n

If a student had done so, I would never have described the writing as “unlawful.” Immature or inappropriate maybe, but not something that would get a student kicked out of not just my class, but all<\/em> his on-campus classes.<\/p>\n

But Pamela Mitzelfeld, who teaches English 380, “Advanced Writing,” at a school in Michigan, felt she had to swing the big PC hammer on student Joseph Corlett.<\/a><\/p>\n

Oakland University near Detroit has suspended a student for three semesters, barred him from campus, and demanded he undergo “sensitivity” counseling because he wrote in a class assignment that he found his instructors attractive. While the course specifically permitted students to write creatively about any topic, the university bizarrely chose to classify his writing as “unlawful individual activities.” Joseph Corlett came to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To call the university’s decision to suspend Corlett for three semesters for his thought crime a “wild overreaction” is putting it mildly. I hope that FIRE roasts them.<\/p>\n

The philosopher Hypatia faced a similar problem with unwanted sexual attraction, the story goes, and dealt with it much more directly<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I taught writing for twenty years. I heard some shocking stuff\u2014especially in the “Creative Nonfiction” class, which occasionally produced some, shall we say, highly confessional material. And there was one outright psycho student who, lucky for me, fixated on a different professor as the cause of all her problems\u2014not to mention accusing him in her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[137,12],"class_list":["post-3811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-Zt","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4364,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4364","url_meta":{"origin":3811,"position":0},"title":"British University Lecturer Faces Wrath of Choronzon","author":"Chas S. 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Clifton","date":"October 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In the dream last night I was at some kind of Protestant Christian youth camp, headed by the stereotypical big, extroverted, 30-something youth minister.A teenaged girl was supposed to be baptized, but the minister had to leave suddenly, so he asked me to baptize her. His request presented two problems:1.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"teaching\"","block_context":{"text":"teaching","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=teaching"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10966,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10966","url_meta":{"origin":3811,"position":2},"title":"Interview with Carl Weschcke’s Biographer","author":"Chas S. 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Clifton","date":"April 18, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Dr. Helen Smith continues blogging on the problems of dealing with \"time bomb\" students.I had one such experience, and it illustrates how difficult it is for universities to deal with them.She was a \"non-traditional\" (30-something) student in one of my upper-division nonfiction writing classes. One day she brought in for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"scholarship\"","block_context":{"text":"scholarship","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=scholarship"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1102,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1102","url_meta":{"origin":3811,"position":4},"title":"Review: Stewart Farrar: Writer on a Broomstick","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Stewart Farrar was constantly writing (journalism, fiction, radio and TV scripts, and more) and recording events--even notes on every Wiccan circle in which he participated. When he and Janet visited our home in 1991 (their first speaking tour in the US), he narrated each day's events into a micro-cassette recorder,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":655,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=655","url_meta":{"origin":3811,"position":5},"title":"The Unsettling Wisdom of Dreams","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 26, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"As some of my readers know, my oldest sister died in February. 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