"Blaxicans" and Other Reinvented Americans

September 12, 2003

'Blaxicans' and Other Reinvented Americans

By RICHARD RODRIGUEZ

There is something unsettling about immigrants because ... well, because they chatter incomprehensibly, and they get in everyone's way. Immigrants seem to be bent on undoing America. Just when Americans think we know who we are -- we are Protestants, culled from Western Europe, are we not? -- then new immigrants appear from Southern Europe or from Eastern Europe. We -- we who are already here -- we don't know exactly what the latest comers will mean to our community. How will they fit in with us? Thus we -- we who were here first -- we begin to question our own identity.

After a generation or two, the grandchildren or the great-grandchildren of immigrants to the United States and the grandchildren of those who tried to keep immigrants out of the United States will romanticize the immigrant, will begin to see the immigrant as the figure who teaches us most about what it means to be an American. The immigrant, in mythic terms, travels from the outermost rind of America to the very center of American mythology. None of this, of course, can we admit to the Vietnamese immigrant who served us our breakfast at the hotel this morning. In another 40 years, we will be prepared to say to the Vietnamese immigrant that he, with his breakfast tray, with his intuition for travel, with his memory of tragedy, with his recognition of peerless freedoms, he fulfills the meaning of America.

In 1997, Gallup conducted a survey on race relations in America, but the poll was concerned only with white and black Americans. No question was put to the aforementioned Vietnamese man. There was certainly no question for the Chinese grocer, none for the Guatemalan barber, none for the tribe of Mexican Indians who reroofed your neighbor's house.

The American conversation about race has always been a black-and-white conversation, but the conversation has become as bloodless as badminton.

I have listened to the black-and-white conversation for most of my life. I was supposed to attach myself to one side or the other, without asking the obvious questions: What is this perpetual dialectic between Europe and Africa? Why does it admit so little reference to anyone else?

I am speaking to you in American English that was taught me by Irish nuns -- immigrant women. I wear an Indian face; I answer to a Spanish surname as well as this California first name, Richard. You might wonder about the complexity of historical factors, the collision of centuries, that creates Richard Rodriguez. My brownness is the illustration of that collision, or the bland memorial of it. I stand before you as an Impure-American, an Ambiguous-American.

In the 19th century, Texans used to say that the reason Mexicans were so easily defeated in battle was because we were so dilute, being neither pure Indian nor pure Spaniard. Yet, at the same time, Mexicans used to say that Mexico, the country of my ancestry, joined two worlds, two competing armies. José Vasconcelos, the Mexican educator and philosopher, famously described Mexicans as la raza cósmica, the cosmic race. In Mexico what one finds as early as the 18th century is a predominant population of mixed-race people. Also, once the slave had been freed in Mexico, the incidence of marriage between Indian and African people there was greater than in any other country in the Americas and has not been equaled since.

Race mixture has not been a point of pride in America. Americans speak more easily about "diversity" than we do about the fact that I might marry your daughter; you might become we; we might become us. America has so readily adopted the Canadian notion of multiculturalism because it preserves our preference for thinking ourselves separate -- our elbows need not touch, thank you. I would prefer that table. I can remain Mexican, whatever that means, in the United States of America.

I would propose that instead of adopting the Canadian model of multiculturalism, America might begin to imagine the Mexican alternative -- that of a mestizaje society.

Because of colonial Mexico, I am mestizo. But I was reinvented by President Richard Nixon. In the early 1970s, Nixon instructed the Office of Management and Budget to identify the major racial and ethnic groups in the United States. OMB came up with five major ethnic or racial groups. The groups are white, black, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian/Eskimo, and Hispanic.

It's what I learned to do when I was in college: to call myself a Hispanic. At my university we even had separate cafeteria tables and "theme houses," where the children of Nixon could gather -- of a feather. Native Americans united. African-Americans. Casa Hispanic.

The interesting thing about Hispanics is that you will never meet us in Latin America. You may meet Chileans and Peruvians and Mexicans. You will not meet Hispanics. If you inquire in Lima or Bogotá about Hispanics, you will be referred to Dallas. For "Hispanic" is a gringo contrivance, a definition of the world according to European patterns of colonization. Such a definition suggests I have more in common with Argentine-Italians than with American Indians; that there is an ineffable union between the white Cuban and the mulatto Puerto Rican because of Spain. Nixon's conclusion has become the basis for the way we now organize and understand American society.

The Census Bureau foretold that by the year 2003, Hispanics would outnumber blacks to become the largest minority in the United States. And, indeed, the year 2003 has arrived and the proclamation of Hispanic ascendancy has been published far and wide. While I admit a competition has existed -- does exist -- in America between Hispanic and black people, I insist that the comparison of Hispanics with blacks will lead, ultimately, to complete nonsense. For there is no such thing as a Hispanic race. In Latin America, one sees every race of the world. One sees white Hispanics, one sees black Hispanics, one sees brown Hispanics who are Indians, many of whom do not speak Spanish because they resist Spain. One sees Asian-Hispanics. To compare blacks and Hispanics, therefore, is to construct a fallacious equation.

Some Hispanics have accepted the fiction. Some Hispanics have too easily accustomed themselves to impersonating a third race, a great new third race in America. But Hispanic is an ethnic term. It is a term denoting culture. So when the Census Bureau says by the year 2060 one-third of all Americans will identify themselves as Hispanic, the Census Bureau is not speculating in pigment or quantifying according to actual historical narratives, but rather is predicting how by the year 2060 one-third of all Americans will identify themselves culturally. For a country that traditionally has taken its understandings of community from blood and color, the new circumstance of so large a group of Americans identifying themselves by virtue of language or fashion or cuisine or literature is an extraordinary change, and a revolutionary one.

People ask me all the time if I envision another Quebec forming in the United States because of the large immigrant movement from the south. Do I see a Quebec forming in the Southwest, for example? No, I don't see that at all. But I do notice the Latin American immigrant population is as much as 10 years younger than the U.S. national population. I notice the Latin American immigrant population is more fertile than the U.S. national population. I see the movement of the immigrants from south to north as a movement of youth -- like approaching spring! -- into a country that is growing middle-aged. I notice immigrants are the archetypal Americans at a time when we -- U.S. citizens -- have become post-Americans, most concerned with subsidized medications.

I was at a small Apostolic Assembly in East Palo Alto a few years ago -- a mainly Spanish-speaking congregation in an area along the freeway, near the heart of the Silicon Valley. This area used to be black East Palo Alto, but it is quickly becoming an Asian and Hispanic Palo Alto neighborhood. There was a moment in the service when newcomers to the congregation were introduced. Newcomers brought letters of introduction from sister evangelical churches in Latin America. The minister read out the various letters and pronounced the names and places of origin to the community. The congregation applauded. And I thought to myself: It's over. The border is over. These people were not being asked whether they had green cards. They were not being asked whether they arrived here legally or illegally. They were being welcomed within a new community for reasons of culture. There is now a north-south line that is theological, a line that cannot be circumvented by the U.S. Border Patrol.

I was on a British Broadcasting Corporation interview show, and a woman introduced me as being "in favor" of assimilation. I am not in favor of assimilation any more than I am in favor of the Pacific Ocean or clement weather. If I had a bumper sticker on the subject, it might read something like ASSIMILATION HAPPENS. One doesn't get up in the morning, as an immigrant child in America, and think to oneself, "How much of an American shall I become today?" One doesn't walk down the street and decide to be 40 percent Mexican and 60 percent American. Culture is fluid. Culture is smoke. You breathe it. You eat it. You can't help hearing it -- Elvis Presley goes in your ear, and you cannot get Elvis Presley out of your mind.

I am in favor of assimilation. I am not in favor of assimilation. I recognize assimilation. A few years ago, I was in Merced, Calif. -- a town of about 75,000 people in the Central Valley where the two largest immigrant groups at that time (California is so fluid, I believe this is no longer the case) were Laotian Hmong and Mexicans. Laotians have never in the history of the world, as far as I know, lived next to Mexicans. But there they were in Merced, and living next to Mexicans. They don't like each other. I was talking to the Laotian kids about why they don't like the Mexican kids. They were telling me that the Mexicans do this and the Mexicans don't do that, when I suddenly realized that they were speaking English with a Spanish accent.

On his interview show, Bill Moyers once asked me how I thought of myself. As an American? Or Hispanic? I answered that I am Chinese, and that is because I live in a Chinese city and because I want to be Chinese. Well, why not? Some Chinese-American people in the Richmond and Sunset districts of San Francisco sometimes paint their houses (so many qualifiers!) in colors I would once have described as garish: lime greens, rose reds, pumpkin. But I have lived in a Chinese city for so long that my eye has taken on that palette, has come to prefer lime greens and rose reds and all the inventions of this Chinese Mediterranean. I see photographs in magazines or documentary footage of China, especially rural China, and I see what I recognize as home. Isn't that odd?

I do think distinctions exist. I'm not talking about an America tomorrow in which we're going to find that black and white are no longer the distinguishing marks of separateness. But many young people I meet tell me they feel like Victorians when they identify themselves as black or white. They don't think of themselves in those terms. And they're already moving into a world in which tattoo or ornament or movement or commune or sexuality or drug or rave or electronic bombast are the organizing principles of their identity. The notion that they are white or black simply doesn't occur.

And increasingly, of course, one meets children who really don't know how to say what they are. They simply are too many things. I met a young girl in San Diego at a convention of mixed-race children, among whom the common habit is to define one parent over the other -- black over white, for example. But this girl said that her mother was Mexican and her father was African. The girl said "Blaxican." By reinventing language, she is reinventing America.

America does not have a vocabulary like the vocabulary the Spanish empire evolved to describe the multiplicity of racial possibilities in the New World. The conversation, the interior monologue of America cannot rely on the old vocabulary -- black, white. We are no longer a black-white nation.

So, what myth do we tell ourselves? The person who got closest to it was Karl Marx. Marx predicted that the discovery of gold in California would be a more central event to the Americas than the discovery of the Americas by Columbus -- which was only the meeting of two tribes, essentially, the European and the Indian. But when gold was discovered in California in the 1840s, the entire world met. For the first time in human history, all of the known world gathered. The Malaysian stood in the gold fields alongside the African, alongside the Chinese, alongside the Australian, alongside the Yankee.

That was an event without parallel in world history and the beginning of modern California -- why California today provides the mythological structure for understanding how we might talk about the American experience: not as biracial, but as the re-creation of the known world in the New World.

Sometimes truly revolutionary things happen without regard. I mean, we may wake up one morning and there is no black race. There is no white race either. There are mythologies, and -- as I am in the business, insofar as I am in any business at all, of demythologizing such identities as black and white -- I come to you as a man of many cultures. I come to you as Chinese. Unless you understand that I am Chinese, then you have not understood anything I have said.

Richard Rodriguez is an editor at Pacific News Service and an essayist for PBS's News Hour. He is the author of Brown: The Last Discovery of America (Viking, 2002), the final volume of his trilogy concerned with the intersection of his personal life and American public life. This excerpt is a version of a speech before the University of Pennsylvania National Commission on Society, Culture, and Community, also adapted in Public Discourse in America: Conversation and Community in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Judith Rodin and Stephen P. Steinberg and to be published this month by University of Pennsylvania Press

---

http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 50, Issue 3, Page B10

Is America Falling Apart?

Is America Falling Apart?

(abridged) by Anthony Burgess

I am back in Bracciano, a castellated town about 13 miles north of Rome, after a year in New Jersey. I find the Italian Government still unstable, gasoline more expensive than anywhere in the world, butchers and bank clerks and tobacconists ready to go on strike at the drop of a hat, neo-fascists at their dirty work, the hammer and sickle painted on the rumps of public statues, a thousand-lira note (officially worth about $1.63) shrunk to the slightness of a dollar.

Nevertheless, it’s delightful to be back. People are underpaid but they go through an act of liking their work, the open markets are luscious with esculent color, the community is important than the state, the human condition is humorously accepted. The northern wind blows viciously today, and there's no central heating to turn on, but it will be pleasant when the wind drops. The two television channels are inadequate, but next Wednesday's return of an old Western is something to look forward to. Manifold consumption isn't important here. The quality of life has nothing to do with the quantity of brand names. What matters is talk, family, cheap wine in the open air, the wresting of minimal sweetness out of the long-known bitterness of livings. I was spoiled in New Jersey.

In New Jersey, I never had to shiver by a fire that wouldn't draw, or go without canned food. America made me develop new appetites in order to make proper use of the supermarket. A character in Evelyn Waugh's Put out More Flags said that the difference between prewar and postwar life was that, prewar, if one thing went wrong the day was ruined; postwar, if one thing went right the day would be made. America is a prewar country, psychologically unprepared for one thing to go wrong. Hence the neurosis, despair, the Kafka feeling that the whole marvelous fabric of American life is coming apart at the seams.

Let us stay for a while on this subject of consumption. American individualism, on the face of it an admirable philosophy, wishes to manifest itself in independence of the community. You don't share things in common; you have your own things. A family's strength is signalized by its possessions. Herein lies a paradox. For the desire for possessions must eventually mean dependence on possessions. Freedom is slavery. Once let the acquisitive instinct burgeon," and there are ruggedly individual forces only too ready to make it come to full and monstrous blossom. New appetites are invented; what to the European are bizarre luxuries become, to the American, plain necessities.   

During my year's stay in New Jersey I let my appetite flower into full Americanism except for one thing. I did not possess an automobile. This self-elected deprivation was a way into the nastier side of the consumer society. Where private ownership) prevails, public amenities decay or are prevented from coming into being. The run-down rail services of America are something I try, vainly, to forget. The nightmare of filth, outside and in, that enfolds the trip from Springfield, Mass., to Grand Central Station would not be accepted in backward Europe. But far worse is the nightmare of travel in and around Los Angeles, where public transport does not exist and people are literally choking to death in their exhaust fumes. This is part of the price of individual ownership.

But if the car owner can ignore the lack of public transport, he can hardly ignore the decay of services in general. His car needs mechanics, and mechanics grow more expensive and less efficient. The gadgets in the home are cheaper to replace than repair. The more efficiently self-contained the home seems to be, the more dependent it is on the great impersonal corporations, as well as a diminishing army of servitors. Skills at the lowest level have to be wooed slavishly and exorbitantly rewarded. Plumbers will not come. Nor, at the higher level, will doctors. And doctors and dentists know their scarcity value and behave accordingly. Americans are at last realizing that the acquisition of goods is not the whole of life. Consumption, on one level, is turning insipid, especially as the quality of the goods seems to be deteriorating, Planned obsolescence is not conducive to pride in workmanship. On another level, consumption is turning sour. There is a growing guilt about the masses of discarded junk—rusting automobiles and refrigerators and washing machines and dehumidifiers—that it is uneconomical to recycle. Indestructible plastic hasn’t even the grace to undergo chemical change. America, the world's biggest consumer, is the world's biggest polluter. Awareness of this is a kind of redemptive grace, but it has not led to repentance and a revolution in consumer habits. Citizens of Los Angeles are horrified by the daily nail of golden smog, but they don't noticeably clamor for a decrease in the number of owner-vehicles. There is no worse neurosis than that which derives from a consciousness of guilt and an inability to reform.

It would be unnecessary for me to list those areas in which thoughtful Americans feel that collapse is coming. It is enough for me to concentrate on education. America has always despised its teacher; and, as a consequence, it has been granted the teachers it deserves. The quality of first-grade education that my son received, in a New Jersey town noted for the excellence of its public schools, could not, I suppose, be faulted on the level of dogged conscientiousness. The teachers worked rigidly from the approved rigidly programmed primers. But there seemed to be no spark, no daring, no madness, no readiness to engage the individual child's mind as anything other than raw material for statistical reductions. The fear of being u orthodox is rooted in the American teacher's soul; you can be fit for treading the path of experimental enterprises.

I know that American technical genius, and most of all moon landing, seems to give the lie to too summary a condemnation of the educational system, but there is more to education than segmental equipping of the mind. There is that transmission of value of the past as a force still miraculously fertile and moving—mostly absent from American education at all levels.

Of course, America was built on a rejection of the past. Even the basic Christianity which was brought to the continent in 1620 was of a novel and bizarre kind. And now America, filling in the vacuum left by the liquefied British Empire, has the task of showing the best thing to the rest of the world. The best thing can only be money-making and consumption for its own sake. In the name of this ghastly creed the jungle must be defoliated.

No wonder thoughtful Americans feel guilty and want to take all the blame they can find. "What do Europeans really think of us?" is a common question at parties. The expected answer is: "They think you're a load of decadent, gross-lipped, potbellied, callous, overbearing neo-imperialists." But the fact is that such an answer, however much desired, would not be an honest one. Europeans think more highly of Americans now than they ever did. Let me explain why.

When Europe had sunk to the level of sewer, America became the golden dream, the Eden where innocence could be recovered. Original sin was the monopoly of that dirty continent over there. In America, progress was possible, and the wrongs committed against the Indians, the wildlife, the land itself, could be explained away in terms of the rational control of environment necessary for the building of a New Jerusalem. Morally there were only right and wrong; evil had no place in America.

At last, with the Vietnam War, Americans are beginning to realize that they are subject to original sin as much as Europeans are. Some things—the massive crime figures, for instance—can now be explained only in terms of absolute evil. America is no longer Europe's daughter nor her rich stepmother. She is Europe's sister. The agony that America is undergoing is not to be associated with breakdown as much as with the parturition of self-knowledge.

It has been assumed that the youth of America has been in the vanguard of the discovery of both the disease and the cure. The various escapist movements, however, have committed the gross error of assuming that original sin rested with their elders, their rulers, and that they themselves could manifest their essential innocence by building little neo-Edens. The drug culture could confirm that the paradisal vision was available to all who sought it. But instant ecstasy has to be purchased, like any other commodity, and, in economic terms, that passive life involves parasitism. Practically all of the crime I encountered in New York was a preying of the opium-eaters on the working community. There has to be the snake in paradise. You can't escape it he heritage of human evil by building communes, usually on an agronomic ignorance that does violence to life. The American young are well-meaning but misguided, and must not themselves be taken as guides.

The guides, as always, lie among the writers and artists. And Americans ought to note that, however things may seem to be falling apart, arts and the humane scholarship are flourishing here. I'm not suggesting that writers and artists have the task of finding a solution to the American mess, but they can at least clarify its nature and show how it relates to the human condition in general. Literature often reacts magnificently to ambience of unease, or apparent breakdown.

I am not suggesting that Americans sit back and wait for a transient period of mistrust and despair to resolve itself. Americans living here and now have a right to an improvement in the quality of their lives, and they themselves must do something about it. It is not right that men and women should fear to go on the street at night, and that they should sometimes fear the police as much as the criminals, both of whom sometimes look like mirror images of each other. There are too many guns about, and the disarming of the police should be a natural aspect of the disarming of the entire citizenry.

American politics, at both the state and the Federal levels, is too much concerned with the protection of large fortunes. The wealth qualification for the aspiring politician is taken for granted; a govern-mental system dedicated to the promotion of personal wealth in a few selected areas will never act for the public good. (The time has come, nevertheless, for citizens to demand, from their government, amenities for the many, of which adequate state pensions and sickness benefits, as well as nationalized transport, should be priorities.)

This angst about America coming apart at the seams, which apparently is shared by nearly 50 per cent of the entire American population, is something to rejoice about. A sense of sin is always admirable, though it must not be allowed to become neurotic. I ask the reader to note that I, an Englishman who no longer lives in England and can't spend more than six months (at a stretch to any other European country, home to America as to a country more stimulating than depressing. I brave the brutality and the guilt in order to be on the scene. I shall be back.

EXTRA CREDIT - TSU Latin Night

Students:

This extra credit event is at Texas Southern University this Sunday.  If you attend, please write a short response paper about it.  See you there!

ENGL 0310 Syllabus

English
Houston Community College Central

---

English 310:

Fundamentals of Grammar and Composition II

CRN 21207 - Fall 2012    

Central Campus – FAC, Room 313 | 7:00 – 9:00 pm | M/W

3 hour lecture course / 48 hours per semester/ 16 weeks

Instructor:   Novella Brooks de Vita

Instructor Contact Information:  n.brooksdevita@hccs.edu

                                                            English Office: 713-718-6671

Office location and hours

Please feel free to contact me concerning any problems that you are experiencing in this course.  You do not need to wait until you have received a poor grade before asking for my assistance.  Your performance in my class is very important to me.  I am available to hear your concerns and just to discuss course topics.

Course Description
English 0310 is an advanced course for students who already demonstrate writing skills sufficient to address complete and comprehensive use of Writing Process. Students develop multiple strategies for essay writing and the use of both persuasion and argument construction. While the focus of English 0310 is primarily at the paragraph and essay level, it does address word and sentence writing elements for revision and editing strategies. Papers will vary from formal essays to “journal” responses.  This is a 3 credit Core Curriculum Course.

Prerequisites
Satisfactory assessment score, satisfactory completion of ENGL 0300.

Your student learning objectives, should you choose to accept them, are to

·         Demonstrate knowledge of writing as process.

·         Apply basic principles of critical thinking in analyzing reading selections, developing expository essays, and writing argumentative essays.

·         Analyze elements such as purpose, audience, tone, style, strategy in essays and/or literature by professional writers.

·         Refine grammar habits and increase academic vocabulary.

·         Synthesize concepts from and use references to assigned readings in their own academic writing.

SCANS or Core Curriculum Statement and Other Standards

Credit: 3 (3 lecture)

English 0310 is an advanced course for students who already demonstrate writing skills sufficient to address complete and comprehensive use of Writing Process.

Instructional Methods

English 0310 is the prerequisite for English 1301. 

With the assumption that students have passed the requirements taught in Fundamentals of Grammar and Composition I, this course is taught with a focus on both students’ communication and analysis skills and composition and grammar needs. One must keep in mind that English is simply another form of communication, not an excessively lofty or impossible subject. The goal of this course is to facilitate the ease with which students may communicate academic and personal ideas to one another and to supervisory figures clearly and concisely.

I, as instructor, must give you the necessary tools and support to nurture these skills. While it is my responsibility to tap these skills within you, the student, it is your responsibility to attend class and take every opportunity you are given to learn and grow academically.  We must all come prepared with homework, texts and assignments and—always—our open minds.

Student Assignments

Assignments have been developed that will enhance your learning.  Students will be required to successfully complete the following:

      The first researched essay for this class will be on a topic NOT directly from the reader.  It will be covered in the first days of class.  Be sure to attend.  While this is an out-of-class essay, you must be in class to know what to write.

      Total of 3 in-class essays:

o   Argumentative Essay:                      15%

o   Analytical Essay:                              15%

o   Expository Essay:                            15%

In the breakdown of the grading: Each of the three essays is worth 15% of your final grade.  10% will be assigned for the composition of each essay written on the assigned date.  5% will be assigned for presentation of each essay and critical response to others’ essays during the following classes.

      Class participation and journal homework of ½ page (minimum) essays to be turned in at the beginning of class. Total grade based on 1/2-page essays and participation: 20%

Homework essays are to be written on the assigned class reading and an unanalyzed passage included in your assigned reading’s section of the book.  Quote at least once from each source and include a “Works Cited.”

      Midterm and Final Essays:

Midterm Essay:                     15%

Final Essay:                           15%

Instructional Materials

75 Readings Plus.  Buscemi and Smith, eds.  New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.  Any edition.

It is recommended you have a dictionary and the following (or similar) writing guide:

The New McGraw-Hill Handbook. Ed, Maimon et al. New York: McGraw-Hill. 2007.

You MUST include a “Works Cited” section at the end of EVERY paper for this class.  Include the MLA citation format as modeled above.  Precede this by the name of your specific author and the article/passage in quotations. i.e.:

Staples, Brent.  “Black Men and Public Space.”  75 Readings…

There are NO excuses for not including a “Works Cited” in your papers.  It has just been explained in your syllabus, is given further elaboration in The New McGraw-Hill Handbook, and will be covered in class before the first written and cited assignment is due.  The highest score possible for a paper missing the “Works Cited” is a C.  Please don’t overlook this simple step when doing your homework for this class.

HCC Policy Statement - ADA

Services to Students with Disabilities
Students who require reasonable accommodations for disabilities are encouraged to report to Dr. Becky Hauri at 713-718-7910 to make necessary arrangements. Faculty is only authorized to provide accommodations by the Disability Support Service Office

HCC Policy Statement: Academic Honesty

A student who is academically dishonest is, by definition, not showing that the coursework has been learned, and that student is claiming an advantage not available to other students. The  instructor is responsible for measuring each student's individual achievements and also for ensuring that all students compete on a level playing field. Thus, in our system, the instructor has teaching, grading, and enforcement roles. You are expected to be familiar with the University's Policy on Academic Honesty, found in the catalog. What that means is: If you are charged with an offense, pleading ignorance of the rules will not help you. Students are responsible for conducting themselves with honor and integrity in fulfilling course requirements. Penalties and/or disciplinary proceedings may be initiated by College System officials against a student accused of scholastic dishonesty.  “Scholastic dishonesty”: includes, but is not limited to, cheating on a test, plagiarism, and collusion.

Cheating on a test includes:

• Copying from another students’ test paper;
• Using  materials not authorized by the person giving the test;
• Collaborating with another student during a test without authorization;
• Knowingly using, buying, selling, stealing, transporting, or soliciting in whole or part the contents of a test that has not been administered;
• Bribing another person to obtain a test that is to be administered.

Plagiarism means the appropriation of another’s work and the unacknowledged incorporation of that work in one’s own written work offered for credit.

Collusion mean the unauthorized collaboration with another person in preparing written work offered for credit. Possible punishments for academic dishonesty may include a grade of 0 or F in the particular assignment, failure in the course, and/or recommendation for probation or dismissal from the College System. (See the Student Handbook)

HCC Policy Statements

Class Attendance - “Students are expected to attend classes regularly. Students are responsible for materials covered during their absences, and it is the student’s responsibility to consult with instructors for make-up assignments [NOTE: not all assignments may be made up after the day they were due; missed in-class assignments may not be made up.] Class attendance is checked daily by instructors. Although it is the responsibility of the student to drop a course for non-attendance, the instructor has the authority to drop a student for excessive absences after the student has accumulated in excess of 12.5% of instruction [six hours of absence.]” Student Handbook

HCC Course Withdrawal Policy
If you decide to withdraw from the course, be sure to withdraw formally, before the official date. Students who have not formally withdrawn will receive a failing grade for the course.

November 2 is the last day to withdraw with a W. After that, you will be assigned a letter grade (A,B,C,D,F) for the course. Please talk to me and the registrar’s office to withdraw if you find it necessary.

Remember to allow a 24-hour response time when communicating via email and/or telephone with a professor and/or counselor.  Do not submit a request to discuss withdrawal options less than a day before the deadline.  If you do not withdraw before the deadline, you will receive the grade that you are making in the class as your final grade. 

Repeat Course Fee
The State of Texas encourages students to complete college without having to repeat failed classes.  To increase student success, students who repeat the same course more than twice, are required to pay extra tuition.  The purpose of this extra tuition fee is to encourage students to pass their courses and to graduate.  Effective fall 2006, HCC will charge a higher tuition rate to students registering the third or subsequent time for a course. If you are considering course withdrawal because you are not earning passing grades, confer with your instructor/counselor as early as possible about your study habits, reading and writing homework, test taking skills, attendance, course participation, and opportunities for tutoring or other assistance that might be available.

Classroom Behavior
As your instructor and as a student in this class, it is our shared responsibility to develop and maintain a positive learning environment for everyone.  Your instructor takes this responsibility very seriously and will inform members of the class if their behavior makes it difficult for him/her to carry out this task.  As a fellow learner, you are asked to respect the learning needs of your classmates and assist your instructor achieve this critical goal.

Use of Camera and/or Recording Devices
Please silence all phones and beepers. Calls and messages may be answered ONLY with the instructor’s permission. Electronic devices (YES…THIS INCLUDES LAPTOPS, PHONES AND MUSIC PLAYERS!) are prohibited unless they pertain to reasonable accommodation, described below, or permitted in-class research. Those without a documented disability must have the instructor’s approval before using any recording or electronic device in class.

Students with documented disabilities who need to use a recording device as a reasonable accommodation should contact the Office for Students with Disabilities for information regarding reasonable accommodations.

Instructor Requirements

As your Instructor, it is my responsibility to:

• Provide the grading scale and detailed grading formula explaining how student grades are to be derived
• Facilitate an effective learning environment through class activities, discussions, and lectures
• Description of any special projects or assignments
• Inform students of policies such as attendance, withdrawal, tardiness and make up
• Provide the course outline and class calendar which will include a description of any special projects or assignments
• Arrange to meet with individual students before and after class as required

To be successful in this class, it is the student’s responsibility to:

• Attend class and participate in class discussions and activities
• Read and comprehend the textbook
• Complete the required assignments and exams
• Ask for help when there is a question or problem
• Keep copies of all paperwork, including this syllabus, handouts and all assignments
• Complete the class with a passing score