The Left doesn’t have a monopoly on snowflake-like behavior, nor does the millennial generation.
Donna Kikkert, a 59-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, is suing her professor because she got an “F” in her class. The failing grade was because Kikkert simply didn’t want to read the material. This isn’t shocking coming from the progressive University of Wisconsin system, but what is surprising is why Kikkert is making the fuss:
Kikkert, 59, who is pursuing a bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, said she wanted to study the classics. When the professor of her Advanced Creative Writing Poetry course selected works other than those of Robert Frost, Edgar Allan Poe and others of interest to Kikkert, she said she asked faculty to reconsider the assignments to round out the studies.
The selected texts, Kikkert said in court records, focused on “lesbians, illicit sexual relationships, incest and frequent swearing.” She asserts her complaints resulted in her earning an F in the course. Unable to persuade the university to raise her mark, Kikkert took Professor Patricia Dyjak to court, asking a judge to order her to assign Kikkert an A for the class.
“She has swung the pendulum far to the side of LGBT students and, in doing so, has chosen to totally discount the importance and the validity of the mainstream student population,” Kikkert argued in her claim. She goes on to claim that her grade was “capricious retaliation” for raising concerns about the course content and about Dyjak’s behavior — including an allegation that the professor exposed her breasts while showing the class a back-shoulder tattoo.
Now, I get why Kikkert doesn’t want to read those topics. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, after all. However, that was the material assigned by the professor. Kikkert read the course description, presumably received a syllabus, and chose to stick around.
She doesn’t get a pass from me just because her complaints indicate she falls on the right side of the political spectrum. She decided to continue taking the course, which implies she wished to impose her will on the professor and not that the professor targeted her unfairly.
If this had been a social justice zealot who was upset that she was required to read something written by the Founding Fathers, we’d be all over it, and for good reason. And Kikkert is correct in thinking that the course material she describes isn’t objectively good or worthy preparation for a degree. But she is old enough to have already learned that the world doesn’t need to conform to your wants and wishes, no matter why you hold them.
Maybe next time, Kikkert will realize that if she finds herself with a professor who she is going to have a problem with, it’s best to find an alternative.
Her failure to do that results in my failure to find a whole lot of sympathy, regardless of her politics.
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