SUNY Binghamton administrators have rebuked a professor who implemented race and sex policies in her syllabus that specified she would be calling on non-white and female students first. The university said professor Ana Maria Candela’s “progressive stacking” policy “clearly violates” the school’s principles.
“We practice progressive stacking when calling on people to participate in class discussion. This means that we try to give priority to non-white folks, to women, and to shy and quiet people who rarely raise their hands,” read professor Ana Maria Candela’s “Class Discussion Guidelines” for her sociology class.
“It also means that if you are white, male, or someone privileged by the racial and gender structures of our society to have your voice easily voiced and heard, we will often ask you to hold off on your questions or comments to give others priority and will come back to you a bit later or at another time,” the professor continued.
“Our experience with this practice is that within little time, those who feel most privileged to speak begin to take the initiative to hold space for others who feel less comfortable speaking first, while those who tend to be more silenced in our society grow more comfortable speaking,” the professor wrote.
“As you can imagine, it has tremendous benefits for our society as a whole when we learn to hold space and listen to others whose voices are typically disregarded and silenced,” Candela added.
A spokesperson for SUNY Binghamton told Breitbart News that Candela’s syllabus “clearly violates” the university’s principles, and that the professor “has updated their syllabus, removing the section in question.”
Binghamton University faculty seek to engage all students in their classes in active participation, including those who are shy or lack self-confidence. The Faculty Staff Handbook outlines principles of effective teaching, which include valuing and encouraging student feedback, encouraging appropriate faculty-student interaction, and respecting the diverse talents and learning styles of students. The syllabus statement you have brought to our attention clearly violates those principles. The faculty member has updated their syllabus, removing the section in question, and is now in compliance with the Faculty Staff Handbook.
Student Sean Harrigan, who exposed the skin color-specific pedagogy after filing a Title IX discrimination complaint to the school, told the New York Post that Binghamton officials had scrambled to revise the syllabus and later insisted they opposed the practice.
“How am I supposed to get a full participation grade if I’m not called on because of the way I was born?” Harrigan said.
The student added that Candela also routinely equates capitalism to slavery during her lectures.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Harrigan said. “The sociology department scares me.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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