Question (from "Professor Jo"): I fired a student worker ("Eddie") after he had a shouting match with "Professor Lars," the senior professor in my area, and called the core course in our area so much, um, balderdash. When it's noticed that Eddie no longer works for me, should I be silent or explain what happened? Do I still have to write recommendations for this student? What is gossip and being petty, and what is being honest and transparent?
Answer: Ms. Mentor notes that your letter follows a standard academic pattern: the facts, the hand wringing, and the theorizing. But you also wisely wrote just to Ms. Mentor rather than craft a mournful yodel calling for the appointment of a special committee to undertake further study of the issue. That way madness lies.
Your first part, the report of the facts, sounds fairly straightforward. You dismissed a worker who had a bad attitude —and everyone knows that throwing a mutineer over the side does let a ship sail more smoothly. Still, curious readers will wonder what triggered Eddie's outburst. Is he a brilliant student, frustrated by the slow pace of a course designed to fit all students? Is he a mediocre student, frustrated by a fast-paced course full of theorems and obscurities? Or could it be that the course is so much balderdash, and no one except Eddie has dared to say so?
Still, any reworking of the course has to be done laboriously by the professor —not on the fly by a disgruntled student, who may be brilliant but doesn't yet know everything. Eddie might have presented his critique calmly, in office hours; or with a delegation of other students; or on evaluation forms. He might have Googled similar courses at other universities to see if they contain the same or different rubbish. But Eddie's now lost the learn-by-doing part of the field, since he's been dismissed from the team.
What next? When will it be "noticed" that Eddie's no longer working for you? If you're in a large department at a large research university, no one may notice at all. In such universities, unfortunately, student workers come and go, and often professors do not even bother to learn their names. Sometimes the students don't know who the professors are, either —"that old guy with the beard in the lab coat" or "the lady with the funny glasses."
But what if you're asked, "Whatever happened to Eddie?" If you were a rock band, you'd cite "creative differences" (someone's in rehab). If Eddie were a suddenly demoted administrator, you'd say he had decided to "spend more time with his family" or "devote himself to research and teaching." If he were a sexual harasser who'd been told to leave the campus, the official line would be something like, "He's pursuing other opportunities." There is no standard cover story for released student workers, but you can use the all-purpose line: "We decided it wasn't a good fit."
If yours is a small campus or a small department, or a unit filled with small-minded folk, there might be speculation about your motives. Why did you fire the student for fighting with Professor Lars? Were you just being loyal to a colleague? Or were you trying to impress a senior professor who'd once muttered, in an off-moment, "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome student worker?" Are you Lars's hatchet woman?
Or are you and Lars collaborators? Are you and Lars thicker than thieves, closerthanthis? Ms. Mentor will now close the curtain and leave you to deal with whatever private drama might lurk behind your letter.
Publicly, will you have to write recommendations for Eddie? If he asks you, he's apt to be desperate or slightly daft. You could, of course, write vicious references ("crude, boorish, impossible to work with"), or vaguely veiled ones ("smart but sometimes difficult —has his own agenda"). You could describe in detail what happened ("Eddie was doing fine with the instructional tools and the ferret feedings until …").
You could show Eddie what you might write and ask if he wants a letter sent out that way. But one Chronicle forum poster did just that, writing a mediocre recommendation for a mediocre student, who was then turned down by a mediocre graduate school —whereupon the student decided to apply to a better school and wanted to pursue "how the content of the letter can be improved."
Ms. Mentor gives you permission to tell Eddie, "I can't write you a positive or useful recommendation, so you'd be better off asking someone else."
But your letter suggests that self-preservation or tact may not be enough to soothe your soul. Like most academics, you're trained to define terms carefully ("gossip," "talking bad," "being petty"). You're also trained to reason inductively, to develop general principles from individual instances. You want to theorize, or raise the stakes to an abstract level at which no one is truly innocent or guilty. ("Mistakes were made" is the classic expression.)
In the real world, "honest and transparent" is generally considered better than backbiting and undermining. And yet Ms. Mentor warns you that looking for universal principles in human relationships can be fraught. In the pursuit of honesty, do you tattle on a colleague whose teaching is lackluster because of her secret cancer treatments? Or if you believe in transparency, do you out a gay colleague, and insist on knowing the precise marital status of a job candidate? Or to avoid any appearance of "talking bad," do you come up with excuses for a drug-dealing employee ("He was under a lot of stress, and some crack happened to be nearby, and he couldn't help himself.")?
There are academics who like to wade in —to listen, to solve, or at least gather gossip. Others prefer to avoid sticky situations, tempestuous colleagues, and felonious behavior. Ms. Mentor knows that she might be called a coward, or she might be considered extremely wise, if anyone noticed her response to most potential face-to-face confrontations.
She dispenses her perfect wisdom and then heads for the hills.
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Question: My office mate has a new, swooping, Blagojevich-style hairdo, a raven-black pelt that is both uncouth and risible. Should I giggle pettily with my other colleagues, tell him privately that it looks incredibly tacky, be confrontation-averse and say nothing, or what?
Answer: What.
Sage Readers: Ms. Mentor invites further musings on what academics should and should not say, write, or perhaps think. As always, she welcomes tactful or veiled gossip, lucid rants, and thoughtful queries, some of which will be answered in future columns.
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