In my last column of the spring semester and school year, I mentioned the case of communications professor Dr. Paul Nelson and his use of his classes and power in order to get students to push forward a politicla and ideological agenda that they may not agree with. His actions violate the first ammendment, and the ideas and beliefs that NDSU supposedly stands for in academic and intellectial freedom and diversity.
In Dr. Nelson’s capstone communications class, a class all students must take and pass in order to graduate, he required his students to form and belong to an organization called Students for Education Equality. This groups mission was to push for and creat propoganda against the mathematics department at NDSU which it seems Dr. Nelson had a problem with. The organization was to push students to take alternative classes to the choices offered by the math department and push for lowered mathematics standards and requirements at NDSU.
Currently the mathematics department requires all incoming freshman and studenst that are not transferring any mathematics credits to take a placement examination in order to determine which level of mathematics classes the student can start at. The minumum mathematics class allowed at NDSU in order to graduate is taking Math 104, and if you do not test into the class you are placed in remedial sections of mathematics classes.
The claim by Nelson and put forward through SEE was that it was improper for the math department to place students and test them prior to entering college since other departments do not do that, and that students if starting in really low level mathematics classes like Math 99 may have to take three or four mathematics classes in order to graduate and that this was a waste of students time and money and was just a con in order to get more money and funding for graduate students and teaching assistants.
Now I don’t agree with SEE’s assesment and complaints. I feel that Dr. Nelson is essentially saying that NDSU should just lower its standards because other schools in the area have lower standards. Never mind that Concordia and MSUM, which are the local universities in the Fargo-Moorhead area are no where near the level of academic rigor that we have at NDSu and therefore comparing their math requirements to ours is like comparing apples to oranges.
Like I said I don’t agree, but they have the right to argue their point. I would hate it if the mathematics department had carte blanche to do as they will with courses and curriculum choices. Eventually, the mathematics department’s quality and academic reputation would sour. But I do think that it is reprehensible that Dr. Nelson forced and entire class to believe what he believed and act on beliefs that they may not share. This is an abuse of power and violates the studetns rights to believe and act on their own beliefs.
I wrote about this over a month ago in the student paper. I was scared because the paper is associated with the communications department and Dr. Nelson is a faculty advisor for the paper. So far nothing has happened. No one that I know of has even looked into my allegations. If so, this means that any faculty and NDSU has free reign to coerce their students into doing their own political dirty work and forcing them to adopt their own beliefs and ideologies.
