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Memorial University student union seeking apology over ‘rape and suicide’ computer science assignment

Student union rep Candace Simms was upset by a question on a computer science assignment.

Too often from Canadian centres of higher learning we are reminded that the mightiest minds are not without their own loose screws.

Comments, campaigns, missteps and mortifications all too frequently plunge university leaders and professors from their pulpit and down, so far down, to the depths of embarrassment.

Such embarrassment might be common and even acceptable from bar stools, coffee shop counters and, gasp, Toronto city hall. But these are the people sent to build, sculpt and challenge the minds of young Canada.

Pity young Canada.

The latest "Whoa, Canada" moment has come to us from Newfoundland's Memorial University, where a computer science professor has turned some heads over a questionable assignment.

The Canadian Press reports that John Shieh asked students to create a computer program that would calculate whether a rape victim was likely to commit suicide.

Student union representative Candace Simms said they were contacted by several students in the class, have called for Shieh to apologize.

“It definitely makes light of a very serious issue. Rape and mental health issues are something that do exist on our campus and in our community,” Simms told Yahoo Canada News.

“You look at the type of question it was and the way it was phrased and it really points to insensitivity, but also a lack of understanding about the seriousness of this issue.”

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Yahoo Canada News attempted to reach Shieh for comment, but was unsuccessful. The professor has, however, reached out to Maclean's and offered an apology.

“The intention for my assignment is to try and give a student familiar things for the logical reasoning,” he told the magazine. “So I didn’t consider that this is so sensitive but this was maybe mistaken. I should have considered more carefully.”

For reference, here is how Shieh's question is worded, via Maclean’s:

Write and test a Prolog program that solves the following problem: Everybody needs love and understanding. People get their courage to live from loving and understanding. Understanding means listening and compassion. Rape victims have to gather their courage to live in order to stand on their dignity and to face future. Heather is a young rape victim. She would die if she could not stand on her dignity and no future. Unfortunately the persistent bullying online and calling her “slut” in her community show that nobody would listen her and there is no compassion towards her. A person willing to die causes the person’s attempting suicide. Whether is Heather attempting a suicide?

The death of Rehtaeh Parsons is still fresh in the minds of Atlantic Canadians. Was this assignment simply a misguided attempt to engage students by linking the assignment to a hot topic? Would that make the assignment more callous, or less?

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This is not the first university or professor to stir controversy. In recent months we have seen:

In each of those cases, the parties involved had reasonable arguments defending the actions. Surely, Shieh believed his actions were defensible as well.

After all, what are the chances that with his 26 years of experience, he simply decided he'd had enough of tip-toeing around Memorial's computer science department and intentionally sought out to offend, or make a subversive social commentary?

Was the question dumb? From the outside, yes. I'm no computer whiz, but I'm sure there are more appropriate scenarios that could have been used. The fact that one wasn’t can’t help but point to, at best, a lack of understanding on the professor's part.