This is a Test

Jesse Jackson holds a watermelon just over the edge of the roof of the 300 -foot Federal Building, and tosses it up with a velocity of 20 feet per second. The height of the watermelon above the ground t seconds later is given by formula h= -16t2 + 20t + 300

a. How many seconds will it pass him (he's standing at a height of 300 feet) on the way down?

b. When will the watermelon hit ground?

Look at this question for a moment and think of the howls of outrage it would receive had the community college professor put that on a final exam. There would be calls for revokation of tenure (assuming cc's grant tenure) and no defenses of academic freedom.
In WATERMELON MATH, Michelle Malkin reports of a community college prof in Seattle who set just such a question on a final. There was, however, a minor change or two.
The actual question reads thus:

Condoleezza[emphasis added] holds a watermelon just over the edge of the roof of the 300 -foot Federal Building, and tosses it up with a velocity of 20 feet per second. The height of the watermelon above the ground t seconds later is given by formula h= -16t2 + 20t + 300

a. How many seconds will it pass her (she's standing at a height of 300 feet) on the way down?

b. When will the watermelon hit ground?

A spokesperson for the school did have the integrity to publicly denounce the question but accepted the prof's claim that the reference was unintended. The school's mouthpiece also had the obligatory defense of the instructor's right of free speech. My question is, would they have made the same public defense had the problem actually been set as I altered it at the beginning of the post? Okay we know that there is really no question there because this is the same double standard we have seen since Condi (and her predecessor Colin Powell) have been exposed to since becoming Secretary of State. She has suffered even more vile personal attacks than this. Usually from the same people who complain about "Amos N Andy".

L'Ombre de l'Olivier rightly points out how embarrasingly simple the problem should be for post high school education.