It's a Jungle Out There

No teacher in touch with reality can long harbor the illusion that she (or he) will be universally loved. While we all remember teachers that we liked immensely and whose classes we enjoyed, it is human nature that different teaching styles and personalities are going to affect students in varying ways. In nearly 40 years of teaching in one capacity or another, I have encountered students that I connected with and students that I knew were just enduring my class until they could escape. But never, in all that time, have I been abused or threatened overtly until this past week.

It started with a poetry analysis that just sounded a bit too pompous—it wasn’t really even a perfect paper and I had already marked a couple of sentences as “wordy,” – but teacher instinct honed over the decades made me turn to Google and type in a few of the student’s phrases. Sure enough, they led me to an online site where essays, both free and available for purchase, contained paragraphs of the student’s paper. Accordingly, I printed them out, highlighting the plagiarized portions. My next step was to present them to my department chair. Blatant plagiarism, also called “academic dishonesty” in the student handbook, can be grounds for expulsion, but as this was my first incident with this student, I decided to give her a zero on the assignment and caution her that her future work would be under scrutiny. I felt I was being generous and prepared myself for tears, apologies, and “thanks for giving me another chance.”

I was certainly NOT prepared for a denial that the student had produced the work, that the computer had somehow sent it to me under her name, and, when that didn’t work, that there were students that were “out to get [the student] and some of them must have turned that paper in. At that, I decided to involve the Dean and promptly e-mailed both the academic dean and the dean of students, and gave a copy of the paper to the academic dean. Then I went to class.

When my class was over I came back to the office and checked my e-mail. My inbox contained a venomous, insulting attack telling me how much all of my students hated me and how bored they were in my class, and including childish personal attacks regarding my age, my wrinkles, and my ugliness. The e-mail sender was unknown to me, but the letter had a couple of phrases that suggested the identity of the sender. I forwarded the e-mail to the department chair and deans. The dean sent an e-mail to the sender’s address outlining all of the violations of university policy and the possible consequences, and cautioning the sender to have no further contact with Professor C, either by e-mail or any other means.

The next morning an even more obscene, venomous, and threatening e-mail appeared in my inbox. It included the phrase “we know where you live. You better watch your back.” This was perceived by the University officials as an overt threat and the local police were called in to make a report.

I do not know how this situation will be resolved. I do know that I am sad to close out a 40 year career of working with students and trying to help them to realize their potential with a fear that someone is reckless enough to really believe that violence (even in words) is the way to achieve one’s goals. I am disappointed that a student in a Christian university sees nothing wrong in stealing (or buying) words and ideas and passing them off as her own. I am alarmed that an adult, in chronology if not character, refuses to accept responsibility for her behavior and to learn from the experience.