Tuesday, April 25, 2006

The Dead Grandmother Problem

I've been thinking about the Dead Grandmother Problem and I think I've come up with a solution I can live with. Every teacher knows how it works: when students anywhere have major assignments due, all over the country grandmothers start conveniently keeling over. Sometimes it's a grandfather and sometimes it's an aunt or uncle, but the uncanny timing of family members' deaths raises skeptical eyebrows amongst teachers.

Professors of my acquaintance have developed various methods of dealing with the Dead Grandmother Problem. One of my colleagues sent flowers to a student's parents to console them for their loss, but the parents responded, "What loss?" Some send sympathy cards and others require students to produce copies of obituaries.

I suppose these methods all manage to expose lying students, but when a student stands before me and mournfully announces that his beloved grandmother has died, I can't bring myself to say, "Prove it." Maybe this is a weakness in my personality, or maybe I keep wondering what would happen if the student responded to my challenge with proof. Then I would bear the burden of having falsely accused a student of lying about the death of a loved one, and that's a burden I don't need to bear. Besides, I already have my hands full being the Plagiarism Police; do I have to be the Dead Grandmother Police as well? There must be a better way.

One of my former colleagues talked about the karmic debt students accrue when they lie about the deaths of loved ones. This is an attitude I find more congenial. I don't believe in karma, but on the other hand, a student who will falsely murder his beloved grandmother just to get an extension on a research paper exhibits the kind of moral sleaziness that is bound to result, eventually, in retribution. So these days when a student offers the Dead Grandmother excuse, I just nod and smile and trust that someday, somewhere, somehow, his sins will find him out.

Just don't ask me to be the one to find them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I SWEAR my grandmother really did die last month!

I had no idea that students would sink so low as to make that sort of excuse. How bad would they feel if they made up that story then she really did die a few days later? Karma coming back to bite them in their lying butts!

In order for employees to collect bereavement pay and not be counted as having an unexcused absence my husband makes employees bring in the obit or the little card - the one that features a sedate Bible verse or poem inside along with the stats on the deceased, and has a water color picture or praying hands on the front - that one gets when they sign the guest book . Perhaps you could talk the college in to making that the policy...I'll bring my grandmother's in tomorrow if you like :)