solacoaster:

bill-door:

christel-thoughts: soleidan: dirtygirl-thumbstump: huxsir: huxsir: Anyway so time to write a sourced email to my professor about the Stonewall Riots I guess I am not even in the vicinity of fucking around this is wonderful fuck academic elitism u rule fuck academic elitism and fuck institutionalized racism and sexism and transmisogyny and FUCK the attempt to undermine the stonewall riots a few lines down when your professor “”“corrects”“” you by adding the phrase ‘Mafia-owned’, this isn’t just like. an agenda it’s also just bad editing Yeah that’s not academic elitism; that’s just a bigot acting the same way we see bigots act on here demanding “source?” before attempting to google because accuracy was never their intention. This isn’t academic elitism. As OP showed, the Stonewall riots being led by transgender POC is not common knowledge. It is good practice to source any research you make as well as anything that is not common knowledge in academic papers. Not because of elitism, but so that people know you’re not making stuff up. Even if you knew something prior, it’s still good to find and give a source. If it hasn’t been taught directly in that class, then you definitely need to.

Okay, so I’ve mentioned in a previous blog that I would keep my head out of politics but as a student and writer, I feel this point needs to be reinforced.

Gonna have to go with bill-door on this. Jumping to conclusions about whether or not something is inaccurate is definitely an issue on the professor’s side as it insinuates that they’ve an argument to say that the statement a student is trying to make is a falsehood, however, when you’re trying to make an academic argument, especially when it covers something controversial, you need the citation then and there within the paper.



It’s cool that the writer knows their history and are able to expound upon it within their email, but the mark down on the essay could’ve easily been avoided by mentioning Johnson and Rivera in a short statement or its own paragraph whilst providing the sources they attached in their message to the instructor.

Even if you know your shit and have the academic sources to back it up, in an academic paper, your sources need to be in your work so that any reader will know you’re not making something up, and better yet, so that if they aren’t informed, they can see the source itself to reinforce the point you’re trying to make. What’s perceived by the writer as common knowledge may not be “common”. You can’t leave it up to your audience to google search something in a statement, especially in academic circles where you need to back statements with sources. This becomes even more common of an expectation when you’re covering more advanced topics at advanced levels of education. Citation is incredibly important.

I wouldn’t call this academic elitism at all. I’d consider it more of an academic muck-up, both on the instructors part for the way he addressed the lack of citation in the initial essay, and on the student’s part for not including the sources then and there. Props to the OP that they could make their argument in the end, but the altercation with the instructor could have been entirely avoided if the proper writing practices were put in place.