When students pursue the nuclear option

"We need to get together and share war stories so I won't feel like I'm the only one," said a junior colleague this morning. He's in the middle of a kerfuffle caused by a student who, upset with a particular classroom policy, sent a long angry e-mail to the President, Provost, the Associate Provost, and just about everyone in a position of authority at the College except the professor himself. Because why start small when you can jump right to the nuclear option?

I told my troubled colleague about the freshman comp students who told a former Provost that I should be required to teach in long sleeves because the big hairy mole on my arm was interfering with the students' ability to learn, and I also shared the then-Provost's helpful suggestion on how I should remedy the situation: "Why don't you just have surgery?" 

And I told him about the time I told a plagiarizing student that I didn't hear his own distinctive voice in his paper and he went and told everyone on the planet that I said his writing wasn't "Black enough."

These incidents and others like them happened when I was still wet behind the ears, not yet tenured and uncertain whether my career could survive. Incidents like these require time and resources from many people and tie everyone up in knots emotionally, with long-term impact. I mean, I still think twice before putting on short sleeves on a teaching day, and I've certainly become more careful about how I confront students about plagiarism. But here's the thing: I could have learned those lessons less traumatically if the students had approached me first instead of employing the nuclear option.

But outrage seems to be the order of the day, so complaints and concerns that ought to be worked out on the classroom level are instead making their way straight to the President and Provost, who, frankly, have one or two other things on their plate. Their response to the students is simple: "Have you talked to the professor?" But by that time the outrage genii is out of the bottle and it's often hard to shove him back in.

My colleague is doing okay. He'll come out of this just fine, and then someday he'll have a war story to share with a junior colleague who needs to hear that we're not alone, that we've all been through our battles, and that, if we pull together, we will survive.