Ryerson University - are you kidding me?

A perfect example that it isn't just politicians who can be absolutely stupid beyond belief is the case of Ryerson University student Chris Avenir, an 18-year old first year student who is facing expulsion from the university for cheating.

Avenir's crime? He ran a Facebook site for fellow computer engineering classmates where they could discuss assignments and help each other out. Were these tests? No. Is it any different than a group of students sitting around a pub table getting help from each other? No. Well - qualify that - apparently there were 146 students taking part and that's a bit many to get around a pub table - but the principle is the same one would think. If it's not OK for 146 students to get help from each other then it isn't ok for 2 or 3 to get help from each other. But no one is being threatened with expulsion for cheating because they helped each other offline.

So what's that got to do with cheating? Well you might ask.

Apparently the professor said the assignments were to be done independently. Yeah. And ... that means what exactly? You can't ask for help? If you looked it up in a book would that be cheating? If your dad or mom is an engineer and they talked about an assignment with you, is that cheating? If you turned to a classmate and said you couldn't understand how to do a part of it, do you go down for that? And since everything you learned in high school encourages you to take the initiative and get whatever help you need because the focus is on understanding and learning - UNDERSTANDING AND LEARNING, IMAGINE THAT - do we now issue instructions to the Boards of Education across the province that all that stops and we go to an old style Soviet approach?

The stupid old fart who has charged Levine is really the jackass who ought to have his ass hauled out in public and his job taken away for terminal stupidity. As someone who's job it is to deal with young people, he has snoozed through the last decade and clearly has no idea of Facebook, YouTube and the whole wired generation of young people who do things in completely different ways than we did 10 years ago.

Professor Jackass also is completely out of touch with the corporate world, who are looking for graduates who are collegial, work well in teams, focus on the collective good as least as much as their own good and who have demonstrated an ability to work cooperatively with colleagues. Professor Jackass seems to think we are back in the days of The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, a 1950s novel that painted a dismal but realistic portrait of what it took to make it in the corporate world of that era.

Sheldon Levy, Ryerson's President, has made significant, positive inroads into the collective consciousness of Torontonions in his efforts to build the former college into a university. He has formidable competition from the U of T and from York University but he has been carving a niche for Ryerson nevertheless. But saddled with this kind of stupidity in his staff, the university will be the laughing stock of most citizens and - much much more importantly - will send a message to students in the future to steer clear of the Ryerson - home of the dinosaurs. That makes Levy's job almost impossible.

So he ought to step in and put a stop to this farce immediately, issue an apology to Levine and put Jackass out to pasture. Maybe that way the university can get on with university building and leave farce to those in the theatrical world.