Letters to the editor

TAs grade fairly

To the Editor:

I'm a teaching assistant and grader in Physics and Astronomy, and I found your article about grading discrepancies on Thursday ("Varied TA grading policies irk students, faculty," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 03/25/04) very interesting. While the problem of varied grading is real, I don't think your article fairly brought attention to: (a) the specific methods the professors and TAs use to combat the issue; and (b) the fact that the discrepancies are accounted for in such a way that the students' final grades are minimally and seldom affected.

I have graded for Astronomy 003 (50 students) and Astronomy 001 (150 students), and TAed three Physics 150 lab sections (50 students) and five Physics 051 lab sections (70 students) this year, and believe me, the problem is real -- but it is dealt with to the best of our abilities.

I know that for physics lab courses, the grades are usually curved separately by TA. So even if I graded overall tougher or easier (this is reflected by my section mean) or had a wider spread of grades (reflected by the standard deviation), the grades are renormalized and adjusted by TA at the end of the semester. So my students are never competing with students in another TA's section, as far as the lab portion of their grade is concerned.

As for the TAs not communicating with the professors, I think that is a misconception, at least speaking from personal experience. For Physics 150 in the fall, the same professor attended every weekly TA meeting to discuss the finer points of teaching and evaluating each lab. For the astronomy courses I graded for, I was in regular contact with the professors throughout the semester, and the professors and the graders graded the exams together and all at once in the same room.

I understand that students are confused and angered when they receive different grades from their peers in different sections when they put in the same amount of work. It is totally reasonable for them to think they are being treated unfairly when this happens. I want to stress that this is almost never the case because of the measures professors implement to account for and counter the different grading policies among TAs. Speaking as a TA and a grader, I want to assure students that my colleagues and I bust our tails every week to make sure they have a fair and enjoyable educational experience.

Takamitsu Tanaka

GSAS '12

Philly deserves 'Real World'

To the Editor:

When I first heard about MTV's The Real World coming to Philly, I had some doubts, too. But the show is just as popular today as it ever has been. City and regional officials have been working for years to convince MTV to come to Philly.

On a basic level, the show brings millions of dollars of direct economic benefit to the city, and millions more in indirect benefits through its worldwide exposure. So the work done by Campus Philly, Young Involved Philadelphia and other partners will dramatically outweigh the single week of energy we spent on it. The hype was honest, and it was worth it.

Besides our free concert with Busta Rhymes this past fall, there has been no single event to get so much attention from college students and young people on www.campusphilly.org as The Real World. Over 3,500 people, 85 percent of them in MTV's demographic, wrote e-mails to MTV and local officials. We could debate whether I, as a 26-year-old Penn alumnus, or "Lone Wolf McQuade" has the right definition of cool, but getting 3,500 people to do anything is an accomplishment only something as cool as MTV can help bring about.

Many of Young Involved Philadelphia's leaders are affiliated with, or graduates of, Penn. There are a whole bunch of Penn students who think that Philly is a great city to live in and that MTV should have been here a long time ago.

Jon Herrmann

Wharton '00

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