Q: I teach in a creative-writing graduate program. A colleague submitted a student’s story to a fiction anthology without the student’s knowledge. The story was accepted and the student is thrilled, but I am uneasy. If other students find out, they may see this as favoritism. Did my colleague act improperly? Should our department establish rules about such things?
– Wendy Rawlings, Tuscaloosa, Ala.
A: I thought your story would go off in a different direction, describing a colleague who submits a student’s story in that colleague’s own name – the story wins the prize and is made into a movie, and for reasons too complicated to explain, the colleague ends up married to Angelina Jolie, which would clearly be unethical, if only for the torment it would cause Brad Pitt. He’s so handsome!
It is not favoritism to single out excellent work for special consideration. If the story was selected on its merits, not for some personal quality of the student’s – plump, pouty lips; plump, pouty wallet – this is favoritism only in the sense that giving one story an A and another an F, or providing a great student with a particularly enthusiastic reference letter, is favoritism.
Your colleague did err in neglecting to get the student’s consent before submitting the story. It is for the student to decide if the work is ready to be judged by outsiders, especially editors who may affect a writer’s career. To clarify the obligations of professors and avoid misunderstandings from students, your department should, as you suggest, establish policies here.
To deter a different sort of favoritism, publishers should require blind submissions. (Similarly, some orchestras have performers audition behind a screen, so listeners are not influenced, even unconsciously, by a musician’s sex or race or famous teacher.) The tyro represented by a powerful agent or championed by a big-time novelist has an edge getting in the door – which can exclude those who lack not talent but connections. There would be genuine, albeit partial, pro-
gress if the editors who decided the fate of a manuscript had no idea who had written or recommended it.
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