Students Retake Botched Lit Hum Final

On Friday, Sept. 7, dozens of Columbia College sophomores retook the Literature Humanities final exam from last semester.

The retake resulted from assistant professor Wen Jin’s disclosure of questions on the exam to her class, from which they spread like wildfire among the class leading to the invalidation of the exam. According to Kathryn Yatrakis, dean of academic affairs for Columbia College, a total of 46 members of the class signed up to take the replacement exam.

When asked about changing the Lit Hum final exam to an unstandardized format to avoid similar problems in the future, Yatrakis said, “In many ways a standardized exam instigates and encourages discussion amongst all first-year students no matter what section they attend or instructor they have.”

Michael Rosenthal, a professor in the English and comparative literature department agreed.

“It’d be a terrible mistake,” to disband a course-wide exam that supports the “integrity and coherence of the course,” Rosenthal said, remarking that the incident that had never happened before at Columbia and will likely never happen again.

As for Jin, she retains her title as assistant professor in the English and comparative literature department, but, according to administrative and faculty members, she is no longer teaching Lit Hum. She is currently teaching two courses: Post-Modernist Texts & Theory and Asian American Literature & Culture.

According to Rosenthal, much of the faculty was disturbed by Jin’s choices. “I hold the professor totally responsible for what happened,” he wrote in an e-mail.

It has been a difficult situation for students, faculty, and administrators alike, but Yatrakis pointed out, “I’d rather focus on the good number of students who let us know what had happened as well as those many, many students who studied hard for the exam and felt let down that their hard work was not as clearly demonstrated as it other wise might have been.”

Each student’s individual instructor will grade the retake and change students’ final grades accordingly.

David Xia can be reached at david.xia@columbiaspectator.com.