The Venting Thread

[arcturus]

Dear Adminicritters -

I understand that you have legal obligations to track student attendance and you are concerned about student retention. Therefore, I understand my corresponding responsibility as an instructor to report non-attending students and to provide timely and relevant feedback to students in my courses. HOWEVER, you have no right to send out email to my students under my name without my knowledge of the content (using "I" and "me" in the text) when I complete a REQUIRED reporting activity. The only reason I know that this email was sent was that a student replied to me with the content included as a quote. I did not write this text. I did not knowingly send this email. It is poorly phrased and completely unlike any of my other communications with my students. It is from my University account, not from within the LMS - which I require all students to use, so getting email from my regular account is also an abridgement of my course policies. I feel violated.

Aggrieved professor

[Harlow2]

Dear Adminicritters -

I understand that you have legal obligations to track student attendance and you are concerned about student retention. Therefore, I understand my corresponding responsibility as an instructor to report non-attending students and to provide timely and relevant feedback to students in my courses. HOWEVER, you have no right to send out email to my students under my name without my knowledge of the content (using "I" and "me" in the text) when I complete a REQUIRED reporting activity. The only reason I know that this email was sent was that a student replied to me with the content included as a quote. I did not write this text. I did not knowingly send this email. It is poorly phrased and completely unlike any of my other communications with my students. It is from my University account, not from within the LMS - which I require all students to use, so getting email from my regular account is also an abridgement of my course policies. I feel violated.

Aggrieved professor

Wow.  Certainly unethical, and I would guess also illegal.  I hope there is someone to whom you can address this.  What do you want to do?

[arcturus]

Dear Adminicritters -

I understand that you have legal obligations to track student attendance and you are concerned about student retention. Therefore, I understand my corresponding responsibility as an instructor to report non-attending students and to provide timely and relevant feedback to students in my courses. HOWEVER, you have no right to send out email to my students under my name without my knowledge of the content (using "I" and "me" in the text) when I complete a REQUIRED reporting activity. The only reason I know that this email was sent was that a student replied to me with the content included as a quote. I did not write this text. I did not knowingly send this email. It is poorly phrased and completely unlike any of my other communications with my students. It is from my University account, not from within the LMS - which I require all students to use, so getting email from my regular account is also an abridgement of my course policies. I feel violated.

Aggrieved professor

Wow.  Certainly unethical, and I would guess also illegal.  I hope there is someone to whom you can address this.  What do you want to do?

My immediate concern is to stop this practice before I need to fill out the same required forms next semester. I have contacted administrators that I think can take such action. If they are not able to resolve this, I guess I will be a non-compliant professor in the future. I cannot in good conscience have these emails sent out under my name.

[lightning]

Dear Adminicritters -

I understand that you have legal obligations to track student attendance and you are concerned about student retention. Therefore, I understand my corresponding responsibility as an instructor to report non-attending students and to provide timely and relevant feedback to students in my courses. HOWEVER, you have no right to send out email to my students under my name without my knowledge of the content (using "I" and "me" in the text) when I complete a REQUIRED reporting activity. The only reason I know that this email was sent was that a student replied to me with the content included as a quote. I did not write this text. I did not knowingly send this email. It is poorly phrased and completely unlike any of my other communications with my students. It is from my University account, not from within the LMS - which I require all students to use, so getting email from my regular account is also an abridgement of my course policies. I feel violated.

Aggrieved professor

Contact your ombudsman, if you have one. Contact the AAUP if you have a chapter. Keep a copy of the email. You can't play nice.

[mamselle]

Write to the students, disavowing the email was sent by you and explain it as a "computer glitch."

CC the person who sent it, and BCC their next-up-the-chain supervisor.

M.

[downer]

To say it was a computer glitch would be a lie. I would not recommend that.

I might disavow the email in an email to the students. I would blame the evil incompetent administrators. Or maybe slightly more politic language would be more emotionally intelligent.

[mamselle]

I think one might get in substantially less trouble blaming a computer than a higher-up.

Which is why I suggested it.

Just a thought...

M.

[sprout]

You might try the disingenous confusion tactic, cc'ing the relevant higher-ups: "My students received this e-mail that looked like it came from me, but I never sent this. I don't know how this happened, can someone please explain?"  You could even suggest that you're worried your account was hacked.

[clean]

Isnt october Cyber Security month? 
I think that I would consider reporting it as an email hack. 
Report it to the cyber police on your campus.

good luck

[EdnaMode]

Our campus has a mask mandate. That said, there is an ever-increasing number of students who, although they wear their masks in the classrooms when under direct supervision, do not wear masks when they are in the hallways, the common areas, or are gathered in classrooms without supervision. Our dean of students, when asked how this should be handled, said that perhaps they could put up more signs, but that there was nothing else to be done and we should be pleased that the unvaccinated students are getting regularly tested and the positive rate is less than 10%. A colleague asked why have a mandate if it is unenforceable and could they start to go maskless themself because they find masks annoying just as the students do. DoS said of course they couldn't and seemed appalled they would even ask.

I've continually found the DoS less than supportive of faculty, always wanting to be the cool dude with students, and I have to agree with my colleague, why have a mandate if there are no consequences for students not following it? This is the same guy whose office, last year, was sending us notification of students' positive results and quarantine status AFTER the students were already back in class from quarantine. I didn't particularly like having to rely on students to inform me of when they could and could not attend class. I am SO ready for this to be over with, it has been handled poorly on my campus from the get-go. As for me, I shall remain masked, and require my students to wear their masks in class, and give the ones I see in common areas without masks *the look* which usually results in them putting their mask on - but I know full well they take them back off immediately after I'm gone.

[mamselle]

You might try the disingenous confusion tactic, cc'ing the relevant higher-ups: "My students received this e-mail that looked like it came from me, but I never sent this. I don't know how this happened, can someone please explain?"  You could even suggest that you're worried your account was hacked.

Yep. That could work, too.

M.

[arcturus]

Thanks for all the support and suggestions! Almost everyone I notified about this has been similarly horrified, so I have hope that this policy will be revisited and no further emails will be sent that appear to come from the instructor of the course when they should be from the Dean of Let's-Retain-Our-Students office (or similar).

[Parasaurolophus]

So my parental leave will leave me at a little more than half my salary for the year. Because the person I talked to in HR when this was all being decided gave me the wrong information. Omfg.

If I'd had accurate information, I'd have been at around 70% (still less than the 85% I was led to believe, mind)

...

Uuuuuuuuuurgh!

[mamselle]

Yikes! (Time to put that hatchling to work for real!)

But, really, I'm sorry, that's several ways not fair.

It almost seems as if they should honor what they first said, since you made decisions based on it and you did not generate the misinformation.

M.

[Parasaurolophus]

It was probably a combination of the not being clear and my misunderstanding (not helped by the print documents being spread across five locations, and some of them are outdated). but it's quite a cock-up in the end. Especially since I did it to help steer the department through course cuts which would have impacted my salary anyway. It seemed win-win-win. Except that in the end the cuts would still have left me better off. Sigh.

It'll be ok, but it does mean a year without much to speak of by way of savings. Which would have been fine if I'd known earlier.

That does signal the end of my trust in HR, though. And it cements my desire to jump ship ASAP.