The Self-Interest Survey

Presumably you have the following goals as a UMD student:

1. To learn as much as you can in your time at UMD.

2. To gain a degree that will help you land a job after graduation.

3. To make friends while at UMD.

4. To new explore new interests outside of the academic sphere.

5. To shape your own curriculum according to your interests.

6. Please add your own if this doesn't cover it:

With these goals in mind, respond to the following.

1. A student in your class continually talks with a friend while the professor is lecturing. This distracts you from the lecture. What should you do about this? What should the professor do about this?

2. Your professor discovers that a student in your class has plagiarized three paragraphs in her seven-paragraph paper by copying it from an Internet source. You are not that student, of course, but does this act of cheating influence your ability to satisfy the above goals? If so, how? How would you like to see the professor respond to this?

3. A Duluth police officer walks by a house in Duluth on 4th Street with loud music and voices emanating from it. It is 3am.

   1. What should that officer do?

   2. That officer sees a UMD student drinking a beer while sitting on the lawn in front of that house. What should he do?

   3. Neighbors have called to complain about the noise coming from the house. Does this change what the officer should do?

   4. Does any of this influence your ability to accomplish the abovementioned goals? If so, how?

4. A student fails to show up to take an exam that takes place on the day indicated on the syllabus. When the professor gets back to her office, she finds an e-mail from that student claiming that she has gotten very sick the night before and desperately wants to make up the exam. As a student who has just taken this exam, what would you like to see this professor do?

5. During a discussion of a sociology essay, a student makes a racially insensitive remark.

   1. As a fellow student in the room, how would you like the professor to respond to this (if at all)?

   2. What if another student in the class were of the race referred to by the remark and acted as if he had not heard the comment? How might this change your expectations of the professor's handling of the incident?

6. News of a tuition increase has you worried about your ability to pay for another year at UMD. What, if anything, can you do about this as a student?