Everything has been settled. The ombudwoman told me that she spoke with the professor. Apparently he co-owns a tract of land and a camp in the adirondacks with 13 other veterans, many of them veterans of WWII. For nearly the last half a century these men have gotten together twice a year to fix-up the place. The men are aging and can't do all the repairs on the place themselves, so my professor has taken it upon himself to bring in a new crop of young men to help with the more labor intensive tasks. The ombudwoman said he didn't seem to understand her explanation of how offering a weekend for men only was disadvantaging his female students. She asked him if he had daughters, and he does, but apparently even that didn't make him understand why he couldn't only invite men to go on the trip, or why the women in his class might take offense to not being included.

At any rate, he canceled the trip for men only. The e-mail explaining the cancellation went like this, squeezed in between a bunch of other class info:

"Note about the Adirondack Weekends. Due to unexpected consequences the 1st planned "Guys Only" Weekend of 17-18-19 September has to be scrapped. I had hoped for a different response. This will eliminate some helping hands at camp that weekend but we'll survive.

Please plan on attending the following weekend starting Fri. 24 September. Sorry for the inconvenience this may have incurred and I certainly meant no harm when offering the option."

A weak apology, at best. And the first part, "I had hoped for a different response" sounds incredibly accusatory of whichever female(s) put a stop to his original plans. Like he was expecting everyone to just be OK with his blatant discrimination. No apology or explanation in class either, which brought him down another notch in my eyes. Really he's just a sad old man living in the 1950's. What can you do with such people?

His manner is reminiscent of every high school ag teacher, shop teacher, and FFA (the acronym for the group formerly called the Future Farmers of America) advisor I've ever had. He stands on a raised platform in Riley Robb 105 pontificating on the ills of taking shorcuts during the cement mixing and pouring process. His gender insensitive language irks me (You 'guys' might be doing this commercially someday, so here's what you gotta remember...). I've always got questions and I'm never shy about asking them. He doesn't take the time to really understand the question being asked, and hardly ever explains things to my satisfaction.

(As a side note, I think every teacher should surround their explanations to questions with two statements. First the teacher should say, "Good question," the explanation should follow, and at the end of the explanation they should ask some variant of, "Does that answer your question?" This way of answering questions validates the students question, encourages more questions, and shows the teachers genuine desire to help a student understand a concept.)

It's hard to engage with the material when he seems so removed from the class, so unwilling to interact, and not at all concerned with his students' understanding of the material. In addition his quizzes over the material are rote memorization from a study guide, which has the exact questions that will be on the quiz. Completely useless for long term retention or mastery. (List 5 positive qualities of cement)

I'm also hyper aware of how I'm reacting to him as a female student receiving information from a grey-haired, old man. I think the class would have an entirely different feel if it were taught by a woman. I have this assumption, whether it's valid or not, that the men in the class know much more about the subject than I do. That they have more experience, that they aren't asking questions because they know it already. I don't know how valid this assumption is. I know there are varying skill levels in the class among the men and women. It's hard to shake the stigma, though, that I don't know as much about carpentry as a man just on merit of our sex.

Lab has so far been great. The professor is his usual macho self, but the men in my class have been great. Being in a shop situation with young, male students at Cornell University is so different than being in shop in high school with boys who were, for the most part, not planning on attending college. They care about quality, they don't make offensive jokes, they are safety conscious, etc. They are everything 16 year old boys are not.

More thoughts to come.