When asked by the class if he would grant extra credit to the student who could shotgun a beer the fastest, the professor replied “Hell yeah!”
Photo by: Jessica Ma
Only one student, Edward Mozkortuta, was able to obtain a passing score on a final written by UCSD Professor Mark Pijan. Students who took the final alongside Mozkortuta and asked that their names not be released
alleged that the only reason he was able to pass the final was because he was heavily intoxicated. Pijan defended the results, releasing the statement “I’m glad one of my students knows how to have a good time.”
Students were outraged by questions like “What is the point of all this bullshit,” in which the only answers that were marked correct addressed the laws on recreational marijuana use in California. As the final continued, questions became more abstract and more confusing due to the format of the assessment. One question was just a hand turkey, and to receive full points, students had to include their own hand turkey with a face. Even though Mozkortuta was able to pass the final, he was heavily marked down by his lack of color and his artistic direction to give the turkey a baseball cap instead of a cockel hat.
An informal investigation was started by students to discover why the only student who was able to pass the final was under the influence of alcohol. Students quickly found multiple posts on Pijan’s Facebook page showing the professor writing the final in multiple states of intoxication and undress. When confronted with this evidence, Pijan told the students that the final was “for a different class, which was much cooler.”
After confronting Pijan, some students drew their attention towards Mozkortuta. Questions were asked about why he showed up to the 8 a.m. final with a blood alcohol content of 0.17, which is above the legal limit to
operate a motor vehicle, and just below the legal limit to teach at a public university. One student alleged that Mozkortuta must have been working with Pijan, as “there was no way that he just happened to show up drunk to the final.” Though after finding that Mozkortuta was a fan of Metallica’s new music, all suspicions were subsided.
After being shown this evidence, UCSD administrators said they could do
nothing as Pijan was tenured and is “fun at parties.” The only noticeable change that UCSD administrators made was hanging a framed picture of Pijan mid-keg stand while writing a part of his final.
This is not the first time professor Pijan’s grading methods were called into question. In late 2013, Pijan docked one of his students a whole letter grade after not reciprocating his gesture of a “high-five.” The university defended this move citing that giving students worse grades for seemingly arbitrary reasons makes the school appear more prestigious. An official at the university later told reporters, “Putting in effort to actually teach students requires time and ability we just don’t have.”
