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Based loosely off of "The Snow Queen", a story by Hans Christian Andersen, we see things take a different turn as the demons become central characters, and the side characters stick around. Yup, that's the only differences. Enjoy!
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When two disgraced ex-feds fall backwards into trouble with the clown mafia, getting out in one piece is gonna be no joke!
Patrik the Vampire
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Patrik loves to knit, bake, and help his friends while dealing with his own demons... like his thirst for blood because, oh yeah--he's a vampire.
No End
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A queer romance about people attempting to build lives in a cold, post-apocalyptic world ravaged by hordes of undead.
Real Science Adventures
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Spin off stories and other adventures from the world of Atomic Robo!
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A story about messy relationships. From friendly foes to crazy families. Nothing is black and white, just full of color. But, all colors can get a little hazy...
Guilded Age
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Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Far to the North
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Kelu turns to the monsters of her remote mountain home when her family is held hostage by outsiders.
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Go Get a Roomie
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Experience the queer journey of an upbeat hippie and the friendships she makes along the way! A tale of self-discovery and love of many forms.
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Cog Kleinschmidt is a diligent, quiet worker at the Mercia Fortress, the world power's leading stronghold. His orderly life is thrown into chaos when an enemy kingdom sends a diplomat for peace talks. This diplomat needs something from Cog - whether he agrees to their terms or not!
Spinnerette
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When a lab accident gives Heather Brown spider powers and six arms, she does what any midwest comic geek would do: Become Ohio's #3 superhero!
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Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
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Iris Black is a self-proclaimed inventor with the curious ability to bring his drawings to life, and yearns to find a space where he can use his powers freely.
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New-kid Kelly is sweet but naive. Luckily, he's got his outgoing neighbor Grey in his corner.
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The robot punches monsters and bad robots and one time he was a cowboy.
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Chandra is a 12-year-old accidental time traveler with a reluctant new dad, who happens to be a member of a feared galactic crime syndicate.
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A depressed, portly, hirsute anime fan stumbles through life in the ever-pursuit of chicken nuggets and other life-shortening indulgences.
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Troubled by gangster rodents, lovesick vampire stalkers, or confused ninja assassins? Don't panic! Sam and Fuzzy are here to help. (For a reasonable fee.)
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When Tiara's pyrokinesis is finally noticed, she is captured by a magical research organization for study. If she cooperates, she could be helping to save humanity from a dire threat - but can she trust them?
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El Goonish Shive
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I still have y E6B circular slide rule AKA “Flight Computer” from my Private Pilot exams, both the one I passed in the 1970s and the one I passed in the 1990s. And it still works, including the plastic thing on the back used to plot wind correction angles. Actually I haven’t tried to rotate the plastic thing so it might be stuck to the back of the computer.
Hello, I’m just assuming you didn’t know but ‘gyped’ is a racial slur. I wasn’t sure what to do when I saw it in this thread but I would have felt weird if I didn’t tell you.
Do racial or cultural slurs ever expire? I don’t mean “go out of use”, just lose their sting. Around here I would guess the answer would be “no”, but I really wonder if the term “Yank” or the expression “Dutch treat”, still have any slander left in them.
Wait, how are those racist? They’re just direct word-for-word calques from Chinese; is it racist that Chinese and English grammar don’t match well? Or is it something about the history of how they’ve been used that I don’t know about?
The history. Both phrases originated as ways to mock Native Americans (the former) and Chinese immigrants (the latter) and became part of the common vernacular; so much that modern day people don’t recognize the racist undertone.
Pretty sure that if you were to use the term ‘gyp’ around someone of Roma heritage it would be at least mildly offensive, so I don’t think that one has (or probably will) fall into inoffense.
From what I can tell, Romani actively consider it a slur, particularly if they’re in Europe where prejudice against them is still a very common occurrence – not that it’s not present in the US, but awareness of the Roma people as a currently-existing and real ethnic group in general is less around here.
I wish racial and cultural bias would expire, but that takes more thought and societal work and humankindness than it takes to suggest softening or eradicating societal agreements against using biased language.
This. ^ If Amber’s going to take up “bad guy” tactics, she needs to learn that the first rule of “sneaking” is to act like you belong there and that it’s a completely mundane task ahead of you.
If you post the link in a comment on a DoA strip (or Willis officially posts it in a description) once it is viewable, then of course. It sounds like an excellent idea.
It’s not like she was innocent either. She initiated the affair and expected him to improve her grades for it. He didn’t turn her down but at least didn’t alter her grades. Both of their ethics are crap.
It was a bad idea on Sal’s part, but Jason is still the authority figure, he’s the one with responsibility and power in this situation. It would be different if Sal had forced him, but he was perfectly willing.
Which is irrelevant to this situation. Sal can seduce whomever she wants, she’s not the one ina position of authority she’s not supposed to be abusing.
I’d guess you could probably still get in trouble for offering sex to a teacher in exchange for grades. Much like you could for offering them a monetary bribe.
Not to the same scale as the teacher accepting of course.
That seems like an absolutely bullshit double standard. Besides, he DIDN’T agree to change her grades for sex – she initiated with that expectation, but he didn’t agree to it.
Not really. Or more accurately, it’s a good double standard. People in positions of authority (even as minor a one as TA) get held to higher standard – don’t have sex with the people you supervise.
If you’re thinking it’s a gendered double standard – Penny got fired for the same thing and there’s even less suggestion of changing grades involved there, though we’re given the impression she was doing it more often.
I guess I figured that since he was accused by someone who didn’t actually know anything, there’d be no way of them knowing that he actually DID do it. Penny didn’t know about Sal and Jason, therefore she didn’t give a name, and couldn’t give one or any evidence at that any sexytimes actually happened if she was asked to. Her whole claim kinda falls apart then. But I might be wrong in this, I’m going off of memory here.
They have stated he can only appeal at a tribunal if he can produce the affected student AND produce a counterargument as shown by the link in Minim’s comment above.
Yes but his counterargument could have easily been “Penny cannot even prove there IS an affected student at all, she couldn’t even describe this so-called ‘affected student'” because Penny had no idea about Sal and Jason’s relations
She could have described Sal, she saw her in his office before. Even if she didn’t, could still be a catch-22 of ‘without the affected student present, we will not proceed’ even despite how stupid that logic actually is because some people really are that stupid. The biggest flaw with your described plan is also Jason’s over all honesty: he wouldn’t think to take another student like say Walky and go ‘this is the ‘so-called affected student’ and manipulate his way out of it.
With no description, you can just fall back on: “I’ve got no idea who you might be talking about. Penny just made it up or misinterpreted something so innocent I can’t even think of what it might be.”
Penny knew Sal had been alone in hers and Jason’s shared office for an off-hours meeting, and she may well have been the “other TA” to whom Jason handed off Sal’s papers for grading.
That’s pretty much the only way I can figure it. Otherwise it makes no sense even by bad HR department standards. Maybe they have a description of Sal from Penny, but not a name.
Still, just so damn awful I can’t even …
Not only is it a screwed up Catch-22 that would keep him from defending himself if he was innocent, but if he actually was the real sleazeball type you’d expect to find sleeping with students, telling him to contact the student to defend himself gives him the perfect opportunity to persuade/bribe/threaten her into covering it up.
Nah, it was clear from moment one that he was not going to contest it. Jason kind of has a sense of honor, if obviously a rather bent one, and part of that is that you don’t try to weasel out of punishments when you are actually guilty. I’m pretty sure it didn’t even occur to him that he could actually contest it and he’s probably be believed over the student.
Yeah, that’s about as much consideration as I expected her to give. Though I am amused she didn’t notice he wasn’t there until the end when he usually is at the front with the professor.
I think that’s just showing how long she wondered about Jason before losing interest. We even have Amber and Walky passing the doorway to show how much time passed (very little)
I think they’re now having a test, not receiving one back.
(Or else it would be pretty shitty, if other people besides the TA and professor were able to get to see your grade that easily.)
You can’t do that anymore, the Federal Educational Right to Privacy Act (FERPA) doesn’t allow posting of grades in any identifiable manner (including SS# or student ID). Nor anything as low tech as passing papers back that way.
You can’t even tell parents what their kid’s grades are without the kid’s explicit permission…
FERPA went into effect in 1974, so you’re (probably) even older than I am… although I remember my grades being posted by student ID in the 80’s by a professor who was probably acting on reflex.
Okay, this “not telling parents their kids’ grades” must be US-only, because over here (well, at least in my country) if the student is a minor, teachers have the responsibility to inform parents of the student’s grades, behaviour and learning progress, even subject matters (if parents are interested).
Only exception is if there is suspicion of abuse of the student by a family member because of bad grades – then the teacher has every right to not discuss grades with the parents (and possibly contact authorities, depending on the situation)
That does still apply here if the student is a minor, though by high school it appears to be phased into a more opt-in situation rather than an expectation.
However, they’re in college now, and most college students are age of majority so the expectation is that these grades won’t be shared as a matter of course. But the students are used to their parents knowing.
Ah yeah, that makes sense (of course) – my brain just kinda got stuck on students in school, possibly because Carl-E used “kids” and for me, someone in college isn’t a kid anymore.
And as an adult, I kind of already assumed everything being protected, as publishing grades etc. would definitely be against privacy protection laws.
Guess my brain also stuck with younger students, because I sometimes get the impression, that people think just because someone is a minor, they don’t have a right for privacy or data protection (besides obvious things like talking about family matters of a student, or their home address).
Oh, I know this one! If the student is in college, their grades are automatically protected by FERPA. However, a lot of students sign a release to allow their parents to see their grades- some parents may make that a condition of paying for college. In K-12 schools, assuming the kid is a minor, the information is available to their parents.
That being said, I definitely did have my tests passed back this way before, mostly in K-12. I actually got in trouble in middle school for asking a teacher not to put my tests in a stack because the other students were making fun of my bad grades.
Thanks for explaining!
I think I remember something like that in upper secondary, I think when we were sixteen, each of us was asked whether our parents should be continued to be notified about our grades (if they asked).
That sounds kinda awful – especially this making fun of you for bad grades. I believe one or two teachers did distribute tests through students (like, choosing two students to pass out the tests, so there was a slight breach of privacy with those two), but nobody ever made fun of me because of grades (they did find other stuff to make fun of). Still, I’m happy that this kind of thing stopped (at least, I think a student has legal footing to keep it secret). It’s one thing if students voluntarily offers information, like “Hey guys, I got an F, again! Damn!”, but it’s a whole other scenario if it’s done by the teacher.
I experienced ‘grade-posting’, in lower secondary on a bunch of centralised tests (for European comparison, at least the results were posted/shown in class, or for the year). But as Carl-E mentioned, it’s not consensus anymore to show grades like that for quite some time – which I personally find is a good thing.
In university something similar-ish happened, a semi-anonymous publishing of grades (part one of a mass exam on Latin – results of hundreds of people were included into an excel chart by student ID number – so unless you knew someone personally and knew their ID number, it was VERY unlikely for anyone to identify your grade).
But other than that, (though probably also culture dependent, I believe in e.g. Japan this is handled differently) if a teacher wants to discuss a grade in front of the class, or certain mistakes a student made, without making it anonymous (e.g. collecting common mistakes in class on a sheet without mentioning from which test they are), they need permission from the student.
Except he didn’t get fired for Sal offering to fuck him.
So, that point, while relevant in other discussions about the situation, isn’t really relevant here.
♫ Who are the hackers in your neighborhood? In your neighborhood? In your neighborhood? Oh, who are the hackers in your neighborhood? They’re the classmates that you meet each day! ♫
AHA! Jason WAS boosting her grades! And that’s why he answered yes when Billie asked. It’s all coming together. Sal will probably feel guilty and want to help Jason. He probably won’t get his job back, but she’ll do something. She’s not the type to leave him out to dry.
I’m…mmmm….not sure how you got there, exactly. Was it the “ehh” in the last panel? Because I’m pretty sure that was a followup to her wondering where Jason was.
I rather though her subconscious picked up on Walky sneaking past up to no good.
To me she has a “someone stepped on my grave” look, not an “oh shit failed it” look.
At the uni where I went if there was an accusation of impropriety with a student they’d call up the student too. Maybe a note is there asking her to meet with the prof?
If she’s got a bad grade here (I don’t know how to read Sal in that last panel but it doesn’t look like a bad grade situation – more like “eurgh what was I even *doing* with Bowtie” or just feeling slightly cold all of a sudden) it doesn’t mean Jason was boosting her grades. (Sal was in it for grades the first time so Jason didn’t lie when answering yes, and in their subsequent conversations it’s fairly clear that he wasn’t doing that) It’s even fairly plausible that Jason marked this load of papers given he was sacked only yesterday in-comic time. And Sal has been getting decent tutoring as well. So if it was a bad grade it’s far more likely that she had an off day (like everyone else does once in a while) or something like that.
He did say to Billie it was for grades, but Jason never gave her improved grades for it, which Sal got mad at him for. And even if he was NOW, she wouldn’t feel guilty, if anything she would be mad at him for LYING about that fact. Sal is 100% the type to leave him out to dry here because he has done nothing to earn her effort of doing something to help him – he got fired for something he did do and it’s not Sal’s responsibility to fix his problems regardless.
In a very strange metaphorical way, Walky did kill the old Jason but I think it’s more that Sal has a sixth sense for when Walky is about to do something really dumb.
Just to make things really weird, Sal’s brother-sense is tingling. It never resonated this hard since that time Walky tried to drop a venomous centipede down the back of Billie’s dress when he was four years old!
….. okay. Now I’m imagining a social experiment of doing this with a big sign on the box saying “stealth device: pretend you don’t see me” just to see who plays along.
Would you like to take a survey? Do you like to eat beans? Do you like George Wendt? Would you like to eat beans with George Wendt? Would you like to watch a movie about George Wendt eating beans?
so i'm thinking, okay, i took some extra photos of this set of doors this year so i could draw some other angles, it's an important set of doors, so let's pull up my new reference photos...
....and do you see a problem, do you see an issue
Well, Lizard is here, and I've been telling myself for... years that I'd take down my Endgame shelf and put up Spider-Man:No Way Home once the final villain was out.
So.
That's a thing I gotta do.
okay okay -- spider-man reboot idea
the lizard is still dr connors, but he's dr PHIL connors, and he wakes up every day and it's groundhog day and he's a lizard
is this anything
Sean Thomason @seanthomason.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Rolling Stone @rollingstone.com ⋅ 1d
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Barb O. Saur 
⚧️
oh hey Cholma, temping at Shortpacked didn’t work out for you either?
He looks unhappy. Wonder if he got a bad math grade too.
Never was good at Algebra (or Trigonometry, for that matter).
What about history, or biology?
Science, French, geology?
Did okay in History, Science, & French. Can’t remember geology or biology, except for the frog dissection.
Of course, that was all loooong ago, so I can easily say ♫ don’t know much about the French I took ♫
So you know what I’m going to ask you next:
How handy are you with a slide rule?
(I think I still have my high school slide rule in a storage box somewhere. Probably next to some punch tape rolls and and an 8-inch floppy disk.)
Haven’t touched a slide rule in . . . uh, 25-30 years? I’m guessing I would be hopelessly lost at first attempt to remember how to use it.
I still have y E6B circular slide rule AKA “Flight Computer” from my Private Pilot exams, both the one I passed in the 1970s and the one I passed in the 1990s. And it still works, including the plastic thing on the back used to plot wind correction angles. Actually I haven’t tried to rotate the plastic thing so it might be stuck to the back of the computer.
I’m an Older Student in university and I often have the same expression when surrounded by teens(tm).
What a wonderful world this would be?
…hah, just what i thought of when i read the comments above
Dude, no tag? Cholma got gyped.
Hello, I’m just assuming you didn’t know but ‘gyped’ is a racial slur. I wasn’t sure what to do when I saw it in this thread but I would have felt weird if I didn’t tell you.
Do racial or cultural slurs ever expire? I don’t mean “go out of use”, just lose their sting. Around here I would guess the answer would be “no”, but I really wonder if the term “Yank” or the expression “Dutch treat”, still have any slander left in them.
I would assume they do, though I think it all depends on the word.
If not, then I get to go full-on word nerd on people and call them out on using phrases like “Long time no see” and “No can do.”
Wait, how are those racist? They’re just direct word-for-word calques from Chinese; is it racist that Chinese and English grammar don’t match well? Or is it something about the history of how they’ve been used that I don’t know about?
The history. Both phrases originated as ways to mock Native Americans (the former) and Chinese immigrants (the latter) and became part of the common vernacular; so much that modern day people don’t recognize the racist undertone.
Pretty sure that if you were to use the term ‘gyp’ around someone of Roma heritage it would be at least mildly offensive, so I don’t think that one has (or probably will) fall into inoffense.
Wow. That was enlightening. I wasn’t even aware of that before this. Thanks.
Did not know that before. Aaaah, vernacular!
From what I can tell, Romani actively consider it a slur, particularly if they’re in Europe where prejudice against them is still a very common occurrence – not that it’s not present in the US, but awareness of the Roma people as a currently-existing and real ethnic group in general is less around here.
I have an Irish acquaintance who isn’t amused when folks use the phrase “paddy wagon”. Three guesses how I learned this.
I wish racial and cultural bias would expire, but that takes more thought and societal work and humankindness than it takes to suggest softening or eradicating societal agreements against using biased language.
“Sue” didn’t get a tag until like the fifth in-comic appearance (including just a speech bubble and one was an elbow?)
Maybe he decided to hop universes when the Soggies came.
Pretty sure the Soggies universe won out in the end, though, even with Soggies as a metaphor for Entitled Anti-Diversity Nerdbros.
Sneak sneak
I love how Amber’s actually trying to be stealthy, but Walky just appears to be clomping along behind her like normal.
I’ve been in adventuring parties like that.
What’s funny to me is that Amber’s “sneaking” would actually be far more suspicious to any passersby.
For all her technical skills, I suspect that social engineering is not one of the tools in her kit.
This. ^ If Amber’s going to take up “bad guy” tactics, she needs to learn that the first rule of “sneaking” is to act like you belong there and that it’s a completely mundane task ahead of you.
I guess Jason emailed his official resignation
Probably just didn’t show up.
then how did they get a replacement so quickly?
I think the prof has a couple TAs.
If I…made a Dumbing of Age fanvideo (you know, like an AMV, but with DoA)…would people be interested in watching it?
(Also, Willis, if you see this, would you be cool with that?)
oh man i’d definitely watch that!! i’ve thought about doing one but uh i know nothing about video editing
sure!
uh, hell YES?
The real question is, where is it and why haven’t we seen it yet?
If you post the link in a comment on a DoA strip (or Willis officially posts it in a description) once it is viewable, then of course. It sounds like an excellent idea.
Huh. I half-expected Jason to actually kinda fight for his TA job, honestly
Why? He’s guilty, he has no reason to think Sal would lie for him, and if there were cameras in the office he’s screwed no matter what.
If there are cameras in the office, you’d think he would have considered that previously.
It’s not like she was innocent either. She initiated the affair and expected him to improve her grades for it. He didn’t turn her down but at least didn’t alter her grades. Both of their ethics are crap.
It was a bad idea on Sal’s part, but Jason is still the authority figure, he’s the one with responsibility and power in this situation. It would be different if Sal had forced him, but he was perfectly willing.
Which is irrelevant to this situation. Sal can seduce whomever she wants, she’s not the one ina position of authority she’s not supposed to be abusing.
I’d guess you could probably still get in trouble for offering sex to a teacher in exchange for grades. Much like you could for offering them a monetary bribe.
Not to the same scale as the teacher accepting of course.
That seems like an absolutely bullshit double standard. Besides, he DIDN’T agree to change her grades for sex – she initiated with that expectation, but he didn’t agree to it.
Not really. Or more accurately, it’s a good double standard. People in positions of authority (even as minor a one as TA) get held to higher standard – don’t have sex with the people you supervise.
If you’re thinking it’s a gendered double standard – Penny got fired for the same thing and there’s even less suggestion of changing grades involved there, though we’re given the impression she was doing it more often.
in other words: with great power comes great responsibility.
(or in this case… with a little power comes slightly more responsibility)
I didn’t, since Jason and Sal weren’t getting along last time we saw them together, and he’d need her help to keep his TA job.
Yeah, and he pretty much gave up as soon as he knew he’d have to argue against her: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/tribunal/ .
Pretty sure they have to come up with the affected party, not the accused. Even in civil cases the 5th Amendment still applies/
Sure, but this isn’t a civil case. It’s an employment tribunal.
I guess I figured that since he was accused by someone who didn’t actually know anything, there’d be no way of them knowing that he actually DID do it. Penny didn’t know about Sal and Jason, therefore she didn’t give a name, and couldn’t give one or any evidence at that any sexytimes actually happened if she was asked to. Her whole claim kinda falls apart then. But I might be wrong in this, I’m going off of memory here.
That was my take too, at least so much as I remember what my take was.
They have stated he can only appeal at a tribunal if he can produce the affected student AND produce a counterargument as shown by the link in Minim’s comment above.
Yes but his counterargument could have easily been “Penny cannot even prove there IS an affected student at all, she couldn’t even describe this so-called ‘affected student'” because Penny had no idea about Sal and Jason’s relations
Unless Penny did describe a student …
She could have described Sal, she saw her in his office before. Even if she didn’t, could still be a catch-22 of ‘without the affected student present, we will not proceed’ even despite how stupid that logic actually is because some people really are that stupid. The biggest flaw with your described plan is also Jason’s over all honesty: he wouldn’t think to take another student like say Walky and go ‘this is the ‘so-called affected student’ and manipulate his way out of it.
With no description, you can just fall back on: “I’ve got no idea who you might be talking about. Penny just made it up or misinterpreted something so innocent I can’t even think of what it might be.”
Penny knew Sal had been alone in hers and Jason’s shared office for an off-hours meeting, and she may well have been the “other TA” to whom Jason handed off Sal’s papers for grading.
That’s pretty much the only way I can figure it. Otherwise it makes no sense even by bad HR department standards. Maybe they have a description of Sal from Penny, but not a name.
Still, just so damn awful I can’t even …
Not only is it a screwed up Catch-22 that would keep him from defending himself if he was innocent, but if he actually was the real sleazeball type you’d expect to find sleeping with students, telling him to contact the student to defend himself gives him the perfect opportunity to persuade/bribe/threaten her into covering it up.
I mean, I never got the impression he even LIKED his job. In a weird way it was probably kind of a relief to him.
Nah, it was clear from moment one that he was not going to contest it. Jason kind of has a sense of honor, if obviously a rather bent one, and part of that is that you don’t try to weasel out of punishments when you are actually guilty. I’m pretty sure it didn’t even occur to him that he could actually contest it and he’s probably be believed over the student.
That’s a good point, he probably didn’t even consider the fact that the case that Penny had made against him was actually paper-thin
There’s No Business Like Cho Business…
“where’s my boytoy ?”
Pay no attention to the freshmen in the hallway.
*floating bowtie shows up, gives instructions*
Think anyone would notice the difference?
if the bowtie could put on a British accent, nope
…For some reason, I now think Jason’s bow tie speaks in a Welsh accent. This amuses me.
o no his bowtie
“You guys don’t think that’s a little spooky?”
“I’m sure the bowtie’s qualified! Just look at that bowtie!”
cholma?
It’s a me, Mari.. er, Cho! I really don’t want to see my grade in this class.
Yeah, that’s about as much consideration as I expected her to give. Though I am amused she didn’t notice he wasn’t there until the end when he usually is at the front with the professor.
I take it she isn’t thrilled by her results. Not hair straightening. but, not great.
I’m pretty sure the ‘ehh’ was in regard to ‘what happened to Jason’. I.e. I don’t really care *shrug*
Maybe. It’s separated by a panel and seems more tied to looking at the paper though.
I think that’s just showing how long she wondered about Jason before losing interest. We even have Amber and Walky passing the doorway to show how much time passed (very little)
I think they’re now having a test, not receiving one back.
(Or else it would be pretty shitty, if other people besides the TA and professor were able to get to see your grade that easily.)
Joyce has mentioned seeing Walky’s grades: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/moral-support/
I COMPLETELY forgot that, thanks for the reminder.
(I’m still of the opinion: that’s pretty shitty)
I’m guessing you’ve never had your grades posted ona public sheet before.
You can’t do that anymore, the Federal Educational Right to Privacy Act (FERPA) doesn’t allow posting of grades in any identifiable manner (including SS# or student ID). Nor anything as low tech as passing papers back that way.
You can’t even tell parents what their kid’s grades are without the kid’s explicit permission…
FERPA went into effect in 1974, so you’re (probably) even older than I am… although I remember my grades being posted by student ID in the 80’s by a professor who was probably acting on reflex.
I’m 31, was born in 86.
Okay, this “not telling parents their kids’ grades” must be US-only, because over here (well, at least in my country) if the student is a minor, teachers have the responsibility to inform parents of the student’s grades, behaviour and learning progress, even subject matters (if parents are interested).
Only exception is if there is suspicion of abuse of the student by a family member because of bad grades – then the teacher has every right to not discuss grades with the parents (and possibly contact authorities, depending on the situation)
That does still apply here if the student is a minor, though by high school it appears to be phased into a more opt-in situation rather than an expectation.
However, they’re in college now, and most college students are age of majority so the expectation is that these grades won’t be shared as a matter of course. But the students are used to their parents knowing.
Ah yeah, that makes sense (of course) – my brain just kinda got stuck on students in school, possibly because Carl-E used “kids” and for me, someone in college isn’t a kid anymore.
And as an adult, I kind of already assumed everything being protected, as publishing grades etc. would definitely be against privacy protection laws.
Guess my brain also stuck with younger students, because I sometimes get the impression, that people think just because someone is a minor, they don’t have a right for privacy or data protection (besides obvious things like talking about family matters of a student, or their home address).
Oh, I know this one! If the student is in college, their grades are automatically protected by FERPA. However, a lot of students sign a release to allow their parents to see their grades- some parents may make that a condition of paying for college. In K-12 schools, assuming the kid is a minor, the information is available to their parents.
That being said, I definitely did have my tests passed back this way before, mostly in K-12. I actually got in trouble in middle school for asking a teacher not to put my tests in a stack because the other students were making fun of my bad grades.
Thanks for explaining!
I think I remember something like that in upper secondary, I think when we were sixteen, each of us was asked whether our parents should be continued to be notified about our grades (if they asked).
That sounds kinda awful – especially this making fun of you for bad grades. I believe one or two teachers did distribute tests through students (like, choosing two students to pass out the tests, so there was a slight breach of privacy with those two), but nobody ever made fun of me because of grades (they did find other stuff to make fun of). Still, I’m happy that this kind of thing stopped (at least, I think a student has legal footing to keep it secret). It’s one thing if students voluntarily offers information, like “Hey guys, I got an F, again! Damn!”, but it’s a whole other scenario if it’s done by the teacher.
I experienced ‘grade-posting’, in lower secondary on a bunch of centralised tests (for European comparison, at least the results were posted/shown in class, or for the year). But as Carl-E mentioned, it’s not consensus anymore to show grades like that for quite some time – which I personally find is a good thing.
In university something similar-ish happened, a semi-anonymous publishing of grades (part one of a mass exam on Latin – results of hundreds of people were included into an excel chart by student ID number – so unless you knew someone personally and knew their ID number, it was VERY unlikely for anyone to identify your grade).
But other than that, (though probably also culture dependent, I believe in e.g. Japan this is handled differently) if a teacher wants to discuss a grade in front of the class, or certain mistakes a student made, without making it anonymous (e.g. collecting common mistakes in class on a sheet without mentioning from which test they are), they need permission from the student.
Oh Sal didn’t you hear? Apparently Jason was sleeping with a student if you can believe it.
I just did one of those snort laughs reading this
This concludes Sal’s interest in Jason.
I can dream.
He got the fuck out of there.
Specifically, her fuck.
She fucked him right off. Gone.
*Plays In the Hall of the Mountain King on the hacked muzak*
Or this version.
Is panel 2 pinkshirt person new?
You are what happened to him Sal. YOU!
Well, he kinda happened to himself.
Also, Penny.
Yep. Penny. Because she lied to the board. Just so happens her lie happened to be true, otherwise the school wouldn’t have known.
Didn’t, y’know, Sal initiate the fuckening?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/whatsallthis/
I mean, Jason had the moral obligation of stopping that right there, but it wasn’t all on him.
Except he didn’t get fired for Sal offering to fuck him.
So, that point, while relevant in other discussions about the situation, isn’t really relevant here.
took my brain some time to catch up but wow, the irony of yesterday’s strip contrasted with today’s…damn you Willis
♫ Who are the hackers in your neighborhood? In your neighborhood? In your neighborhood? Oh, who are the hackers in your neighborhood? They’re the classmates that you meet each day! ♫
Derp. Just noticed the Alt-text. “Hi, yourself! Thanks for noticing me, Sempai.”
That’s how I handle change too. Ehhh
AHA! Jason WAS boosting her grades! And that’s why he answered yes when Billie asked. It’s all coming together. Sal will probably feel guilty and want to help Jason. He probably won’t get his job back, but she’ll do something. She’s not the type to leave him out to dry.
I’m…mmmm….not sure how you got there, exactly. Was it the “ehh” in the last panel? Because I’m pretty sure that was a followup to her wondering where Jason was.
I rather though her subconscious picked up on Walky sneaking past up to no good.
To me she has a “someone stepped on my grave” look, not an “oh shit failed it” look.
At the uni where I went if there was an accusation of impropriety with a student they’d call up the student too. Maybe a note is there asking her to meet with the prof?
This was my take on her shudder as well though you phrased it better than I planning.
I thought was a shrug, a “I wonder where he is?” shrug “eh”
as in, she doesn’t care enough to actually devote thought to wondering where he is.
If she’s got a bad grade here (I don’t know how to read Sal in that last panel but it doesn’t look like a bad grade situation – more like “eurgh what was I even *doing* with Bowtie” or just feeling slightly cold all of a sudden) it doesn’t mean Jason was boosting her grades. (Sal was in it for grades the first time so Jason didn’t lie when answering yes, and in their subsequent conversations it’s fairly clear that he wasn’t doing that) It’s even fairly plausible that Jason marked this load of papers given he was sacked only yesterday in-comic time. And Sal has been getting decent tutoring as well. So if it was a bad grade it’s far more likely that she had an off day (like everyone else does once in a while) or something like that.
He did say to Billie it was for grades, but Jason never gave her improved grades for it, which Sal got mad at him for. And even if he was NOW, she wouldn’t feel guilty, if anything she would be mad at him for LYING about that fact. Sal is 100% the type to leave him out to dry here because he has done nothing to earn her effort of doing something to help him – he got fired for something he did do and it’s not Sal’s responsibility to fix his problems regardless.
I know she’s shrugging, but my first thought was that she was shivering as a couple of “ghosts” passed behind her.
…And ninja’d by CJ.
I think that Sal has a sixth sense for when Walky is going to do something stupid for a stupid reason.
at first I thought the Cameo was Buckets of Blood Guy™…
Ouch!
This strip is framed like Amber and Walky assassinated him.
I know he’s actually alive and all, but I kind of want to adopt this as my new headcanon.
Is he a Templar!?
In a very strange metaphorical way, Walky did kill the old Jason but I think it’s more that Sal has a sixth sense for when Walky is about to do something really dumb.
Just to make things really weird, Sal’s brother-sense is tingling. It never resonated this hard since that time Walky tried to drop a venomous centipede down the back of Billie’s dress when he was four years old!
Nothing says “I’m sneaky. Don’t pay attention to me. Nothing to see here.” like walking on your tiptoes down a brightly lit hallway.
What they need is for Amber to be humming the appropriate background music from the Metal Gear series!
Two Intrepid Friends.
Led by Walky! Their Leader Walky!
Walky’s Angels Mmm-Mmm-Mmm
Walky’s Angels Mmm-Mmm-Mmm
Harnessing the power of the trash
with the Ancient Amulet they found on the rooftop!
Mmm-Mmm-Mmm
The Amulet is crap
Mmm-Mmm-Mmm
It’s probably a garbage dump
Amber: Walky! I will computer hack you in the face!
If only they had a big cardboard box they could hide in and move ever so slowly. That would be so much more inconspicuous.
….. okay. Now I’m imagining a social experiment of doing this with a big sign on the box saying “stealth device: pretend you don’t see me” just to see who plays along.
How many will see the person but not the sign?
Odd that the new TA wasn’t tagged, especially as she has a speaking role. Is this a one-panel appearance?
“Hrm. Shoulders twitching. Apathy levels rising. Weird, that usually only happens when mah dork brother is nearby.
Eh well.”
Is that Joe Matt sitting in front of Sal? {Joe Math}
I think the punchline is Sal thinks so little of Jason she doesn’t care he’s gone.
Sneaking? Sneaking?
https://youtu.be/iB5asCOdrms
I have to imagine the sneaking in the background accompanied with Mission Impossible music.
You forgot to tag Paley McPaleface over there in the right hand corner of the panel. Holy crap that guy needs a tan.
Speaking for some of us, some people don’t do this ‘tan’ thing – They just go to ‘hideous burn and shedding epidermis’.
Been there, burnt that! OUCH!
The evil daystar burns and blinds! Luckily, here in Scotland we hardly ever see the dratted thing.
HEIST!!!!
OK, so Jason did really lose his job.
He still has the tribunal coming up so he might not but he doesn’t plan to contest it and they still have classes until then.
You did, Sal. You happened.
Well, technically, Penny happened, but it sort of works out the same way.
In for a Penny, in for a pound…
Or if your Joe…
In Penny’s office, in for a pound
*you’re
Calling it now, Mike is a new TA, or else in the office for other reasons and is waiting for them, to ruin their hacking plan.