"You can tell by"

[Joseph Nardoni]

Hi, I have an interesting conundrum that is driving me batty.  I seem to have
gotten myself into a bit of a pickle by paraphrasing (accurately, I believe)
what a colleague said in an open meeting.  Here's the situation.  Our
department was engaged in a spirited discussion about our college-wide Writing Sample
that we give to our incoming freshmen.  We were at the point in our discussion
where people were discussing how they actually responded to the samples.  One
professor said she sometimes had to read only one paragraph to make a
decision as to whether or not a student belonged in Comp I (our first semester
college-level course).  Another professor said, "You can tell by  X  whether a
student belongs in Comp I."  Another professor said that she liked to consider
whether or not she wanted to be teaching a particular student in Comp I when she
was looking at the samples.  A fourth professor stated that perhaps we ought to
think about what criteria we were using when we were evaluating the Writing
Samples.

Given that context, I took the professor who said, "You can tell by X whether
a student belongs in Comp I" to mean that she used X as a criterion by which
she evaluated Writing Samples.  When I stated in our next Department meeting
that she had said she used X as a criterion this professor shouted me down,
said I misrepresented her statement, and filed a complaint against me.  I find
this whole response rather bizarre, so I was wondering what all of you thought.
Am I nuts to believe that she said she used X as a criterion, when she used
the construction, "You can tell by X whether a student belongs in Comp I?"

I would appreciate any responses you could give me, including any information
you might be able to find about when this phrase came into common usage.

Thanks for reading this unusual posting.

Joe Nardoni
Professor of English and Creative Writing,

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