It is clear that this proposal represents an attempt to steal graduate students away from our program, graduate students who would not meet our high standards anyway, and shoot them through a substandard curriculum only pretending to be something like ours.It should be noted that the courses listed for the new program are considered "foundational" for Ph.D. students in three other programs (including my own), so these people somehow managed to insult three highly-ranked graduate programs in three departments in three different colleges simultaneously.
Up until today I could proudly say that I had never accidentally hit the "reply" button on my email and sent something embarrassingly honest to the wrong person. But I can no longer say that. I "replied" to this message with a statement that read something like this:
Clearly everyone in [this department] has their head up their ass.Although I thought I was sending this response to one of my colleagues, the recipient of the message was the chair of the (problem) department's graduate studies committee.
The proposal did not pass muster at the college level, and must be resubmitted with (in part) this department's approval. Anyone want to make any bets on how much work I'm going to have to do to get it through now?
Update: The recipient of my message CCed it to the dean who, not coincidentally, is a member of the (problem) department. I have sent a sober apology to all involved.
12 comments:
Oh NO!!!
We've all done it. Someday you'll laugh. A LONG time from now.
But it sounds like these guys deserved it.
Pray for sudden deaths or early retirements. As you probably know, we, academics, do keep grudges!!
Can't you find any allies in that department?
I don't suppose there's any way you can claim the e-mail was incomplete.... should have read "Everyone except the nice people in [this department] has their head..." No?
I tried.
So, we have this fancy spam filtering technology, when will we get 'emotional content filtering'. You simply have a short list: mom, partner, departmental drinking buddy, who can all receive email with emotional content. For everyone else you hit SEND and it goes into quarantine. Three hours later you are asked 'Do you really want to send this email to this person?'
How hard can that be?
Oh no. Really? That actually sounds pretty unprofessional of the recipient of message. What did he say when he cc'ed it to the dean?
Ianqui, it was a defensive email in which he expressed surprise that I would respond so harshly to what was obviously a reasonable message on his part.
We have since had more correspondence, all CCed to the dean, and have begun to resolve our differences. I have also shared this correspondence with my faculty representative on this college committee, and he thought that, given the messages I had been sent, the "head up your ass" message was entirely appropriate, even if I hadn't meant to send it to the offenders.
It's an interesting difference between men and women in the academy. I am physiologically incapable of strapping on antlers and butting heads with people when that is clearly the only rational course of action. My colleague had no problem with my (accidentally) doing so, and in fact said I shouldn't have apologized for it. I always try seduction first, and if that doesn't work (it usually does) I write about it here in my blog.
So the recipient of your e-mail went tattling to the Dean? What a baby.
I haven't committed any e-mail faux pas like this, but I was overheard one day by some administrators as I was loudly joking with a colleague about needing to celebrate "Bring a Shotgun to Work Day."
I don't think that went over too well. Fortunately by 4-year review file had already made it through the pipeline.
ap:
The difference though is that while your colleagues think it a reasonable reaction no doubt the recipient thought 'What a bitch!' which he would not have had the message come from a man.
Gah!
Here's my most embarrassing "meant to forward but hit reply instead" story - when I was offered my current job, the dept chair emailed me with a prospective salary, which was considerably higher than I what I had expected they might offer. I meant to forward the email to my husband, but hit reply instead, and thus sent my soon-to-be boss a message that said, "Hey, baby! Let me take the dollar signs out of my eyes. What do you think?"
Fortunately my dept chair is a good sport. We called it even two years later when he accidentally gave my annual review to a senior faculty member. Our last names are alphabetically adjacent, and the envelopes got switched.
Ouch! But this happens to everyone, and it makes a good story that you'll laugh at someday. And, it has the virtue of being true. :)
Rolling on the floor laughing! A true faux pas, as most utternances of truth are. Awkward now, certainly, but definitely something to remember.
I, thankfully, have not yet had the pleasure of this particular technological misunderstanding, however, I'm sure it is only a matter of time. At my current institution, emails are regarded as legal documents, and any untoward messages are saved for future reference (e.g. revenge or grievance), so everyone tends to tread very carefully around the medium, although that still doesn't stop goofs.
Remember the days of actual paper memos? I was one of the first cohort of grad students to enroll in email at my doctoral institution back in 1993, when everything was still hard copy and only true techno geeks were online. Nowadays, your reputation can be ruined before teatime and you wouldn't even know it.
My solution to this particular conundrum has been to treat email like a letter, with a heading, salutation, body, and conclusion. And never, ever trust to email what you wouldn't want to say outloud in a department meeting. Thankfully, we can still meet face to face in our little warrens to dish, at least until the time when we're all just brains in saline, communicating through wires.
This is great! They were going to block the approval of this proposal anyway, folks, so you might as well give them a piece of your mind. And sometimes it actually helps to tell a silly department, or chair, or dean to get real. It surprises them--they aren't used to it. But sometimes there's everything to gain and nothing to lose.
(I of course gave up on discretion long ago, when I decided everyone knew what I thought by the look in my eye, anyway. This allows me to say what I want on email, because I'll say the same in department meetings, or to anyone who asks.)
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