I have nothing against your strength of feeling, though I am a bit surprised at how strongly you resist having that feeling resisted. So let us get back to the original question, but lets come at it from a different direction. Let us ask why the professor chose to express himself with the words “I won’t grade it”, rather than “I will give it a failing grade”.
It is doubtful that this wording was chosen so as to confuse or annoy you. My guess would be that the professor assumed (incorrectly, it turns out) that both phrasings would be interpreted the same. So why would he chose to say “I won’t grade it”? Well, which statement sounds more like the professor imposing an arbitrary burden upon the student? And which sounds more like the professor refusing to be imposed upon by students? Which makes the failing grade appear as resulting from something the student did, and which makes it appear to result from something the professor did?
Statements have meanings at several levels. At the level of simply communicating the policy, yes, ambiguity should have been avoided. But at the level of communicating the reasonableness of the policy, the professor preferred to seem reasonable rather than arbitrary. It is often best to simply tolerate this kind of moral-positioning subtext in language, unless you are deconstructing some text for an English lit class.
I have nothing against your strength of feeling, though I am a bit surprised at how strongly you resist having that feeling resisted. So let us get back to the original question, but lets come at it from a different direction. Let us ask why the professor chose to express himself with the words “I won’t grade it”, rather than “I will give it a failing grade”.
It is doubtful that this wording was chosen so as to confuse or annoy you. My guess would be that the professor assumed (incorrectly, it turns out) that both phrasings would be interpreted the same. So why would he chose to say “I won’t grade it”? Well, which statement sounds more like the professor imposing an arbitrary burden upon the student? And which sounds more like the professor refusing to be imposed upon by students? Which makes the failing grade appear as resulting from something the student did, and which makes it appear to result from something the professor did?
Statements have meanings at several levels. At the level of simply communicating the policy, yes, ambiguity should have been avoided. But at the level of communicating the reasonableness of the policy, the professor preferred to seem reasonable rather than arbitrary. It is often best to simply tolerate this kind of moral-positioning subtext in language, unless you are deconstructing some text for an English lit class.