Columnist and college professor Mike Adams has observed that people no longer debate folks with whom they disagree, but too often resort to simple defamation. He provides some examples:
Last semester, a student did poorly in my class. He was one of the few students who did not do well as I had a wonderful semester with as great a bunch of kids as I’ve had in my career. But this one unhappy kid decided that the way to protest his grade was to log on to http://www.RateMyProfessors.com – I call it “Rape My Professors Dot Com” – and write a fictitious story about why did so poorly.
In a widely read public forum he wrote in great detail about how he did well on all of his tests. But, according to the poor victim, an unethical Dr. Adams graded him solely on personal factors. He also wrote publicly that I lied on my syllabus (by claiming that I did not take absences directly into account in factoring grades).
But there was one small problem. The kid never showed up to get any of his test grades. Therefore, he had no idea that his grade was simply the objectively computed average of all three test grades.
Problem: You do poorly in a class.
Solution: Log on to the internet and accuse the professor (by name) of a breach of ethics.
My experience with defamation
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