O Academic Martyr Squad, your paper-grading crosses your defining characteristic–I see you the cross of grading, and raise you the cross of ACADEMIC FREEDOM.

A little backstory…

When I published “The End of the College Essay (An Essay),” I definitely expected a fracas. Here, in no particular order, is what I expected, and could handle:

1) Righteous indignation (the more senior the faculty, the more prestigious the institution–in short, the less likely one is to have graded an average Freshperson paper from the American hoi polloi in the past decade).

2) Disagreement and passionate defense of the essay, even when students don’t want to write it. And this was kiiiiinda my point. If you’re so wedded to the idea, then we need to work to fix it, pronto. The plagiarism, the rush jobs, the general consumer mentality of today’s American college students–these are real problems, and they need to be…