How Faculty Treat Staff at Universities

The following exchange happened at some point in near history at "Midwestern University." It demonstrates well how staff are (mis)treated by faculty:

*Note: Names have been changed to protect privacy and this vignette loosely depicts a real incident but no assumptions should be made about when it happened, who was involved, and remember it is a story.

A Day in the Life of University Staff

One day, a nearly sobbing gray-haired African American student I knew well ran into my office.

"She failed me. She failed me. I knew she hated me."

I asked her to explain. She told me about a miserable online class she took. She still learned a lot, but she was convinced the professor was wicked.

"Why?" I asked.

"I have all of these emails sent between us students where we are talking about all of the issues that came up in class. She did not explain things well. She makes you pay to hear what you did wrong on assignments, and you know I don't have pennies to spare," my gracefully aging, immaculately groomed student stated. I knew, because our program had to find grant money in our own budget to get her over the finish line.

"Pay her?" I queried.

"You have to send her a stamped envelope. I don't know how many stamps to put on it, because she has the papers and I can't weigh them."

"Well, did you write to your instructor to find out what happened?"

"Yes, we have written back and forth. But we still don't communicate. She doesn't answer my questions. Plus, I did send her self-addressed, stamped envelopes a while ago, and my graded assignments still have not come. So, I never did know what I was doing wrong that got me Ds on my papers. I am going to graduate school NEXT week. This class is just a general education requirement, can they really do this to me? I am out of financial aid for undergraduate classes. If I have to take it over and I don't graduate, I will never finish college. I'm never going to be a psychologist."

I reassured her that maybe this was just a computer error. She responded quickly, "She hates me, she's been giving me Ds."

I listened to her for nearly two hours as she had a panic attack and thought her graduate school career was over. She was so distrustful of her professor and so convinced the professor was out to get her that I could not even get her to see that the situation might be correctable. That level of alienation from her professor I would attribute to the fact she never met her in person, it was an entirely online class.

I tried to get Ms. Betty* to see that other explanations were possible, but she was sure the professor was malignant. Something clearly went wrong in their interactions in that online class. Now, Ms. Betty being near retirement age, her interactions with computers sans any human contact left her to become paranoid when her grades come back lower than she expected. She prides herself on how well she reads people, and she could not get a sense of her unseen professor.

She has a relatively high GPA and she is confident in her work, so the first time she got a D on an assignment in this class, she became suspicious of the teacher's motives. The lack of proper communication, as defined by Ms. Betty anyway, had intensified her reaction to the next few grades coming in lower than she expected. She was convinced the failing grade was real.

As she paced around, she wanted to call the President of the University or at least the Dean. In her high distress, I called in my boss, the director, and asked him to console her. She repeated everything she had said to me to him. He asked her to try to write to her professor again. I asked her again to write the professor one more time. She finally agreed, but first, she wanted to know all of the steps she had to take to appeal the grade. I printed out the directions provided on the university's website.

Ms. Betty immediately panicked that she needed to write a letter to the chair of her professor's department and she did not know who the person was. We looked around the university's website, and one link that did not work anymore said it was going to give a list of department chairs, deans, and other administrators. Nothing else seemed to answer the question except the now defunct link.

"I need to understand what I need to do and who I need to talk to at every level to get this thing resolved. We only have a day or two before this affects my graduate school career. Can't you do anything?," pleaded Ms. Betty.

"Listen, Ms. Betty, we will find out everything you need to do, so your financial aid for graduate school is not canceled. We will do everything we can to help you get your degree. We can write the Dean and ask if she knows who the department chair is. Then, we write your professor one more time together. I will type and you can dictate what you want to say."

Ms. Betty reluctantly agreed.

The email that I helped my student to craft--after my boss and I convinced her to try again with her teacher is below:

Email#1___Ms. Betty Drafts an Email to Her Teacher__(sent 10 min after Email#2)___

This email was written, but it was not sent until after Ms. Betty had a clear picture of all of the steps she would need to take to successfully appeal her grade.

Dear Professor,

I just received my grade of NC (no credit) for your class,
and I am writing to ask if you received all of my assignments or if perhaps something was missing.

If nothing is missing, could you please provide a detailed accounting of how my grade was determined, including specific grades for each assignment, how the assignments were weighted, and how the final grade was calculated. Could you please send my graded assignments to me as well?

I am hoping to communicate closely with you about options that might be available, because I am keenly interested in working to resolve any problems-- including by redoing any assignments. I was scheduled to graduate this August, and I am beginning my Master's at Midwestern State* this Fall.

I look forward to hearing from you, and you may call me at or email me

Thank you sincerely,
Ms. Betty





Email #2____My Question to the Dean______________________


Dear Dean,

One of our graduating student advisees just received a failing grade in a course in your division, and she would like to appeal the grade. She has contacted the professor without receiving any response. She knows that the next step is to talk to the Department Chair, but we were not clear on who that person would be. Should she be going to you or is there someone else that is more appropriate?

Sincerely,
Me (DMF)



Email #3___Dean's Quick, Thoughtful Answer_______________

Hi DMF,

Thanks for emailing. The Chair of the Department is [Egotistical Professor]*. I'm copying him so that he knows a student will be contacting him soon.

The Dean





Email #4___Chair of Dept, Professor Egotistical, Writes to Everyone____

Dear Dean,

As it happens, the instructor for this course has already informed me of this somewhat puzzling situation. If this is the situation I have in mind, the instructor entered a grade for the student, and the student then contacted the instructor to inform her that the student had had a grade of NC posted. We are checking to see what explains this discrepancy; perhaps there is some kind of technical problem that can be overcome easily.

I should note that it is untrue that the student "contacted the professor without receiving any response." DMF wrote this in an email at 3:45 PM. The instructor has forwarded to me her recent email exchange with the student. The student informed the instructor of this NC in an email message at 5:39 PM. The instructor responded to the student in an email at 9:01 PM--less than three-and-a-half hours after the student's email and well after regular working hours. It is additionally puzzling that DMF wrote that the student had contacted the instructor without receiving a response almost two hours before the student sent her message to the instructor! Students are not helped in any way when they or their advocates make questionable or untrue statements.

I trust this situation will be clarified shortly.

Respectfully yours,

Egotistical Professor




Email #5___My response trying to defend myself______________

Dear Dean and others

I can only go by what a student tells me. the student has two emails she sent to the professor in early August asking questions that were not answered. That is obvious, because she has both her emails with questions and the responses, which fail to address the questions the student asked.

I trust that assumptions will not be made without first communicating with me in the future.

Sincerely,
Me




Email #6_Chair of Dept, Professor Egotistical Writes Me_______

Dear Dr. DMF,

I believe you initiated the accusations, specifically relaying an unverified and (it turned out) untrue charge of unresponsiveness against a faculty member with a very good track record. Your statements in your second email, to the dean of CAS, are irrelevant and unsubstantiated. The student specifically charged that the instructor had not responded to her complaint about the NC, which only appeared yesterday. So communications from earlier in the semester are immaterial. Since you nonetheless saw fit, in your second email, to relay further (again, irrelevant) charges against one of my faculty members, claiming you had evidence to back them up, you might have produced that evidence. I am unsure that said evidence would support your claims.

Quite frankly: students, for any number of reasons, may go off half-cocked and make claims about instructors' behavior that are exaggerated or simply untrue. In almost all such cases, a grievance over grades is involved. This may be annoying, but it is to be expected from a small percentage of students at any institution. University employees, however, should know better than to echo any and all student complaints without checking. Saying that you only know what students tell you isn't good enough when you are relaying and amplifying serious accusations against university faculty or anyone else.


Kind regards,
Egotistical Professor




Email#7___My response to his snarky email______________

I am planning to file a formal complaint against you. First of all, I asked a simple question of the DEAN, not you, about who gets an academic appeal in your department when it is not successful with an instructor.

Second, I wrote the email *with the student in question* and she told me *as we were sitting* there typing to the dean that she had contacted the instructor to no avail. She had two emails printed out that demonstrated that her questions to the professor were not being answered. I will have the student forward them to you immediately. I simply provided the Dean context for the question about who to go to next. This student is a 60 yr old woman about to start graduate school here at our school.

It is NOT my job to sort out who said what, that is *your* job. I am simply supposed to tell my students *who* is next to contact in a grade appeal. I will have to share with this student that she was going off half-cocked when she said this professor was not a good professor for her at all. The fact that she is starting grad school in a few days here will allow her to testify in my complaint.

Finally, I am not engaging in a conversation with someone who is treating me so obnoxiously. What is your nerve trying to blame me for a student/faculty dispute?

Given that the question to the dean was simple and did not involve all of the drama you inserted, you can refrain from contacting me further!

Signed, Me





Email#8__Response from Egotistical Professor_________________

Dear DMF,

I'm sorry you took offense, and that you feel I have been obnoxious. In my last email to you I wrote frankly. I can refrain from writing to you further if that is your wish. However, this entire series of exchanges was initiated when you wrote to my dean, stating as fact a claim of faculty unresponsiveness which, on inspection, proved to be untrue. As department chair it is my duty to point this out. If a student comes to me and tells me she has contacted an instructor and received no response, I usually ask when the student sought to initiate contact and how long she has waited for a response, rather than broadcasting such claims without asking such basic questions. If the student seems to have a well-founded grievance, I will communicate with the instructor promptly asking the instructor to be responsive. On the other hand, if a student's complaint proves invalid or unsupported, I will gently suggest to the student that this is my impression. If others at the university choose to pass on, without even cursory investigation, unfounded claims about my department's faculty members, I am sure you would not expect me to do other than point out the documented facts and defend these faculty members.

Once again, I am sorry if my frankness has hurt your feelings. Each of us has a job to do here, and each of us must do that job.


Kind regards,
Egotistical Professor





Email #9____My response to Egotistical Professor________________

Yes, I did ask you to stop harassing me.

I do thank you though, because you have helped me to decide to take another job at where I will be treated with respect.

Also, your automatic bias against the student and in favor of the professor is interesting. This student's concern that there was NO evaluation for the class that she could fill out should be addressed. Should we warn students not to take faculty problems to the chair of your department since you automatically disbelieve them?

Now, you can do your job, and some other patsy can do mine.

Thanks,
DMF




Last Email to our Big Boss Who has Copies of all of the Above__________

Dear Big Boss,

The condescending tone and utter dismissiveness was palpable. I am a program alumni having grown up in lifelong poverty. I was working for the program to give something back, but I am not willing to sacrifice my dignity to do so. Previous similar treatment by faculty led me to do interviews for other positions. This incident is helping me decide whether to leave here.

I am concerned at the pattern I have observed wherein faculty are extremely disrespectful to staff in our program.

As it is, I served this college for seven months by working as Director and Counselor, both for a salary less than a typical director receives. A program of our exact same size at nearby colleges has five staff. You can imagine what my life has been like doing it all with 1 1/2 staff. And our students are much needier! I am exhausted and mistreated and feel the university has not been exceptionally supportive at this point. I am seriously considering leaving the university for another position.

RESPONSE: Silence


End of the story: The matter was almost resolved at that point; it turned out it was a grading error. The professor would resubmit the grade, and Ms. Betty would pass and go to graduate school.