Hot Takes IRL

By: Kevin Shi Students should be allowed to fail their classmates 

By: Group Project "Survivor"

Have you ever watched Survivor? For those of you who didn’t have a chain smoking babysitter, Survivor is a reality TV competition show where contestants on a deserted island had to band together to build shelter, get food, and endure the elements. At the end of each episode, they vote people off. Some people are voted off for strategic reasons (you win the show if you’re the lone survivor after all) or for their poor performance. 

Do you see where I’m going with this? To set the scene, I am stuck in a strategy class with the following “archetypes”: someone recruiting for IB who hasn’t shown up to class in the past three weeks, someone who never does the readings and the professor has given up cold calling them, and a MMM. We suck.

I am often doing most of the work, and I have tried to do our negotiation exercise on three different occasions this week. It is not working out. I propose that we offer a voting system after each project, and we should be allowed to fail people who really aren’t pulling their weight. Screw self-reflections. Here’s how it would work:

Trigger: A formal vote can only be requested when at least two indicators show chronic non-contribution (e.g., 1/3 of team report missed meetings, no commits on shared work for 2+ weeks, last minute firedrills for other members).

Vote anonymity: Ballots are collected via Google Form that hides names from other students

Options:

• Keep (no change)

• Probation (require remediation plan)

• Fail (student receives a failing grade and their torch is blown out)
  

Thresholds: Elimination-style requires a supermajority to avoid mob decisions: e.g., removal needs ≥ 2/3 of active team members voting for removal AND documented evidence. Probation requires a simple majority.

Tie-breakers: If the removal vote is exactly at threshold or ambiguous: instructor calls a meeting, reviews evidence, and may require a mediation session or a short evidence presentation. Everyone must be present. Anyone who fails to show up is failed immediately.

Remediation: Those who failed a class by this means must only be in groups with other failed students for the following quarter. If this is not possible in a given elective, they cannot take it and/or their next groups must agree to take them on.

For those who think this is harsh, we need some level of accountability for our actions. If we have to provide CTECs for our professors where we need to be objective and ask for changes, we should be allowed to do the same for our fellow students. The tribe has spoken.

Read more by Kevin Shi: Hot Takes IRL (September '25)