Justice or Mercy
Thomas R. Willemain
In that tense week after final exams and before graduation, Assistant Professor Jennifer Woodley wondered whether she should have hidden in the library and worked on the publish part of publish-or-perish. But she was young and soft enough to sit in her office with the door open, just asking for trouble. Her older colleagues were nowhere to be seen.
She tried to re-focus on Ragavan’s latest article on optimal warehouse automation. She saw a problem with his approach, and she had an idea that worked around that problem. The computations would be easier to scale up, too. But she knew that she had to write her ideas in a way that wouldn’t perturb the Grand Old Man and his buddies, who could find a way to sandbag her article. She was trying to think of a gentle way to make the criticism, to --
She was startled by sudden movement. In charged Tim Harding, waving his graded final exam. His face was as red as his hair, his eyes wild. His 210 pound load of anger might have bothered some other small women, but not Jennifer.
“Tim, do come in.”
“How can you give me an F?”
“I’m sorry I had to do that, Tim, but you really gave yourself the F. I merely certified it.”
“This will get me thrown out of ROTC! You’re ruining my life. It’s not fair!”
“Listen, scoring 26% on the final exam, skipping half the homework, saying nothing in class, barely passing the midterm – all that adds up to an F.”
“Evans gave Brad Strickland an extra assignment; if he hands in an essay by Wednesday, he’ll get a D and keep his cum above 2.3. You can do that.”
“Don’t tell me anything about other students: I’m not supposed to know about their grades. As for Professor Evans, I can’t answer for him. I just know what I have to do, based on your performance. If you’d worked with me when I invited you to, we wouldn’t be where we are now.”
“So you won’t help? I only need a D+ to get over the line.”
“The B’s all want to be A’s, the D’s all want to be C’s. I can’t fiddle with the grades after they’re in. The syllabus laid out the grading criteria on day 1. And, frankly, I’ve got other things to do now that the semester is over.”
“There’s a grade revision form. I printed it off the Registrar’s web site. Here, take it and just do it now.”
“You’re crossing the line here. And what am I going to list as the justification? ‘Tim’s sorry’?”
“You can’t –“
“Stop. Look at the Student Handbook. There’s a grade appeal process. Go to the department HQ, fill out the form, and hand it in to Professor Chow. Now leave. We’re done.”
Jennifer stood up.
Tim turned and stormed out. As he left, she saw that his face was white as a sheet, and it was now his eyes that were red.
Jennifer sat down and tried to settle her pounding pulse. She’d never had a confrontation like that one that didn’t involve an ex-boyfriend. She bounced back up and paced around her office. “Goddamn!”
Half a minute later, Joe Hawkins stood in her doorway with a look on his face. “I heard all that. I was ready to ‘drop in’ just to back you up. It sounded loud but not like it was going to get violent. You ok?”
“Not really. This is not what I signed up for….”
“Just to say it, you can expect a conversation with Cheng Chow about this episode.”
“Right. Will you back me?”
“I can say the kid was out of control, you handled it professionally, you had valid reasons for your grade. And it’s really your call. Cheng has to be very careful about revising any of our grades.”
“OK, thank you, Joe.”
“But Cheng will probably ask you what he asked me the first time this happened to me.”
“What’s that?”
“He’ll ask you about what he calls the ‘balance between justice and mercy’”.
“What?”
“You have justice on your side. The kid flunked fair and square, and he crossed over the line just now. But he’s finally realizing that he has a lot to lose here – his whole career in the Navy and beyond. That’s where the mercy part could come in. I’m not saying you should have done what he wanted, but Cheng will ask you about that.”
“Then I’ll tell him Tim got as much of both as I can give.”