Sociology 1004                                                                                               Dr. Patti Adler  
Deviance in US Society                                                                                      Spring, 2014

                                                                   SYLLABUS

Class Hours: Tuesday & Thursday 2:00-3:00 
My Office: Ketchum 207  
Office Hours: Tuesday & Thursday TBA, by appointment only
Telephone Numbers: office 303 492-1177 (I never check for messages), home 303 449-3021  
Email address: adler@colorado.edu  
Website: http://spot.colorado.edu/~adler  
Blog: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-deviance-society

REQUIRED READING

Patricia A. and Peter Adler, Constructions of Deviance Custom Edition. This book is available for purchase at the UMC Bookstore and at The Colorado Bookstore, the one across the street. In an effort to keep the price of the book as low as possible I have relinquished my royalties for this Custom Edition and asked the publisher to use this money to lower the price of the book for students. The specific reading assignments are noted on the Topics and Readings sheet in the book. It is your responsibility to keep up with the readings in a timely manner. In addition to purchasing the book, you are required to purchase SIX blue books available at the bookstore, and hand them in to your ATA by the end of the fourth week of the course. If you have not submitted these blue books to your ATA by the Friday of the fourth week of the course, your grade will be penalized by one "notch" (a B becomes a B-), and will continue to be penalized by one further notch for each exam until you hand them in. No one can pass the class without handing in blue books. Do NOT write in or on them. You will need two blue books for each exam, and these will be randomly distributed back to you at the exams. I will be counting up the number of blue books I have on hand and I can probably get away with fewer than 6 from you. Listen for an announcement in class about this.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

In this course I want to introduce you to the central sociological concepts of deviance, social order, social power, identity construction, and identity management. In this class we will work together to begin to understand the basics of the sociological perspective and to see how it differs from the psychological approach that most people are used to using to understand society and social life. We will use the topic of deviance to see how groups of people have the power to shape social definitions and apply them onto others. We will then look at the consequences for those defined as deviant of this label. We will look at how people come to develop a deviant identity and what that means to them in the exercise of their everyday lives. The readings I have selected are designed to take us through this intellectual pathway in an interesting and informative manner.

GENERAL COURSE POLICIES

You are responsible for the material and announcements presented during lectures and labs, whether or not you attend. Please arrange with another student to get missed notes and announcements. If there is any question about an interpretation of anything, the book is the final authority that we will use to resolve questions or differences. However, if there is a discrepancy between the Syllabus, Topics and Readings, or any other material in the book and the information that is online, on the Website, the Website is the most up-to-date and authoritative source. This is a course that fills the largest room on campus. When people talk to their neighbors excessively during the class or enter/exit the class during the middle of the lecture it becomes disruptive. If you do this we will consult with you after class and it may result in a penalty to your grade. You are responsible for keeping all graded assignments and exams.

In addition, technology should be used only for course-related purposes during the class. Please turn off your cell phones or Blackberries, and do not text or call people during the class. Laptops, while permitted, are to be used only for taking notes and not for surfing the Web, emailing your friends, networking on Facebook, shopping online, or playing poker. Students seated around you find this extremely distracting. If this becomes a problem we may have to resort to seating all technology users in a segregated part of the classroom, penalizing scofflaws, or banning students’ use of technology altogether.

Labs begin meeting the first day of the semester, and you are responsible for everything covered there. Should there be a week where school does not meet for any day of that week (Labor Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, fall break), or where you miss your lab (you are sick, you did not know labs had begun meeting already), it is your responsibility to attend another lab that week. We will not be making up the material that would have been covered on that day later in that lab; we will assume you got the information elsewhere and are up-to-date. You can find the complete list of all the labs, their times, their locations, and their TAs and ATAs on my Website under the “Deviance” button. In addition, you are responsible for keeping track of all announcements and syllabus changes made in class whether you are there or not. Announcements are often made right at the beginning of class before lecture begins. In addition, you are responsible for getting lecture and lab material that you missed from your classmates and not from me, the TAs, or the ATAs. Office hours will not be spent going over lectures you missed.

You can expect to be challenged in the quality and quantity of assigned work and in classroom discussion.  You should understand the requirements for each class, come to class prepared to engage in learning the course material, complete the assignments, and be prepared to learn from your successes and failures. According to the guidelines of the Boulder Faculty Assembly, an undergraduate student should expect to spend at least three hours per week outside of class for each credit hour earned.  

If you miss a lecture, do not contact anyone. Find another student in the class from whom you can get the notes. If you miss a lab, you should also find another student in your lab to get the notes. Once you get these, if you have any questions, feel free to contact your TA or ATA or me to have these questions answered. But in a class of 500, unfortunately we cannot re-teach lectures (or labs) that you have missed to each student individually. In addition, you are responsible for keeping track of all announcements and syllabus changes made in class whether you are there or not. Announcements are often made right at the beginning of class before lecture begins. TAs keep track of attendance in labs and grade you on that. No one keeps track of attendance in lecture.

Once the grades in this class are posted it is too late to ask for extra credit to raise your grade. The best way to raise your grade, aside from coming to lecture and lab, taking good notes, and studying hard, is to do one of the extra credit assignments.  

If you have three or more exams scheduled for the same day you area entitled to arrange an alternative exam time for the third exam scheduled on that day. So, for example, since our exam is scheduled for Saturday, May 3 from 1:30-4:00, if your other two exams are at 7:30am and 10:30am, you should contact me to arrange for a re-schedule. If, however, one of your other exams begins at 4:30pm or 7:30pm, you should contact your other professor. Such arrangements MUST be made, according to CU policy, by the deadline to drop a class with the dean and the instructor's permission in the tenth week of the semester (so no later than March 13th). If you wait any longer than this to contact me, you are out of luck.

There are NO MAKE-UP EXAMS in this class. If you have any problem, please contact me directly; do not speak only to your TA or ATA. DO NOT WAIT; call me at HOME right away if you have a problem and email me. If you have something important that has been scheduled prior to the start of the semester that you must attend, or if you have a conflict with any of the exams in this class, you must notify ME directly PRIOR TO THE END OF THE FOURTH WEEK OF THE SEMESTER to see if we can offer you alternate grading options; we will not attempt to arrange options for anyone who waits longer than this to contact me. If you are going to miss a test or be late with an assignment due to health, family or some other immediate emergency situations, you MUST call and/or email me BEFORE the exam. Failure to follow these procedures will result in a grade of F on the exam. If you are unable to complete the work in this course and want to apply for an incomplete, you must request one and meet with Patti in person (to fill out the required paperwork, which BOTH of us must sign) prior to the end of the course. It is the policy of the University of Colorado that incompletes can only be granted if students have satisfactorily completed a "significant portion of the course" and if they have extenuating circumstances beyond their control that prevent them from completing the course within the normal time frame.

In this course we expect students to conduct themselves, both orally and in their written assignments, in a civil and appropriate manner at all times. Hate speech, profanity, and defamation of any individuals or groups will not be tolerated, and will result in a serious diminution of a student’s grade in the class. We also expect students to follow the mandate of the University of Colorado’s HONOR CODE.

All students of the University of Colorado at Boulder are responsible for knowing and adhering to the academic integrity policy of this institution. Violations of this policy may include: cheating, plagiarism, aid of academic dishonesty, fabrication, lying, bribery, and threatening behavior.  All incidents of academic misconduct shall be reported to the Honor Code Council (honor@colorado.edu; 303-725-2273). Students who are found to be in violation of the academic integrity policy will be subject to both academic sanctions
from the faculty member and non-academic sanctions (including but not limited to university probation, suspension, or expulsion). Other information on the Honor Code can be found at
http://www.colorado.edu/policies/honor.html  and at
http://www.colorado.edu/academics/honorcode/

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

We will be using the class email list to communicate with you this semester. I do not use D2L, although my TAs do. I have already begun sending email to the class and will continue to do so. If you have not received an email in this way from me by the end of the first week, IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY (NOT MINE) TO MAKE SURE THROUGH THE UNIVERSITY THAT YOUR NAME GETS ADDED TO THIS LIST. The first assignment in the course is the email quiz. Early in the semester I will email the quiz to all students. I will first send out a couple of test class emails to make sure that you are receiving these and mention them in class. Do not panic if you don’t get the quiz; I will let you know in class after I send it out! You should make sure you are getting them. After you receive the quiz, you should consult the syllabus and the Website to find the answers to the questions. Thereafter you are expected to know how to find out all the pertinent information for this course. Please return the quiz to your ATA by the date specified in the quiz. It is worth 4% of your grade.  

Out of the lecture section, there will be three exams. The first two are in-class and at night. The first one is given after section III (Constructing Deviance), the second after section V (Managing Stigma), and the last during final exam week. They will consist of fill-in and short answer questions. The fill-in questions are designed to let you match basic terms and ideas to their definitions and applications, and are intended to capture knowledge and recall. The short answer questions are designed to ask you to identify the main lists from the lectures and readings and apply them to hypothetical situations we create. These will involve some creativity as well as analytical and intellectual challenge. You are expected to learn the modified outline form for answering the questions prior to entering the exam. I enclose the complete packet of exams that we used in the course last semester at the end of this book, so that you can get an idea of the types of questions we ask and the format we expect you to us on our tests. You must write the exams in either blue or black pen. Out of the deviance labs there will be a fifth basis for your grade evaluation. You will be graded on your attendance and participation in the discussion, quizzes, and activities in labs that occur throughout the semester.

In addition, there will be two optional extra credit assignments available for students. It is possible to do them both! The first one is a Norm Violation paper. This will be a short (3-5 page) mini-paper covering your violation and analysis of some norm. This is not an excuse to commit pranks, but a serious paper about the importance of norms in society. For this paper you have two choices. You can either reflectively analyze some norm violation you have done, or you can select a norm and violate it during this class. After reflecting or gathering information about the behavior, write a short essay describing and analyzing this norm violation, the reactions of others, and what you can theoretically infer from this. You will be expected to relate these ideas to your discussions of the definition and social creation of deviance. 

The second extra credit option is a paper on The Tender Cut. This assignment is on the Website. You can order the book from Amazon.com (plenty of used copies are available for cheap!) or as an eBook from them. This assignment cannot be completed until the end of the semester because it draws on lecture and reading materials from the Careers section. It is due at the final exam. The structure of the extra credit available for these assignments is discussed below.

Your grade in this class will depend on the following formula:

Extra Credit Assignments:

Papers will be evaluated according to the following grades, and given the following amount of extra credit points:

                                                                        Ö--                                 0 (check minus-minus)

                                                                        Ö-                                30 (check minus)

                                                                        Ö                                  60 (check)

                                                                        Ö+                                90 (check plus)

Assignment                                                    Percentage     Total Points Possible

Email Quiz                                                        4%                             40

First Exam                                                       24%                             240

Second Exam                                                  24%                             240

Third Exam                                                     24%                             240

Lab Participation and Attendance                    24%                             240

Total Points Possible                                                                           1000  

To calculate how you are doing in the class, use the following scale to convert your letter grades on the exams into numbers:

A:10    A-:9     B+:8    B:7      B-:6     C+:5    C:4      C-:3     D+:2    D:1      D-:0     F:-1

Multiply your converted letter grade by the percentage that each assignment is worth, and add these all together. Your final grade in this class is usually calculated by the following numbers (although special exceptions may be made):

A:1050-951     A-:950-851      B+:850-751     B:750-651       B-:650-551      C+:550-451     C:450-351       C-:350-251            D:250-151       F:150 and below

Please note that it is the official policy of the University of Colorado that we are not allowed to discuss grades over the Internet, as this is not a secure medium.

Return to Deviance page