Email Usage

This morning, at a meeting with the acting director of my department, it was pointed out to me that a strongly worded email I had sent to 3 members of my department 1) constituted having “published,” and therefore fell under the jurisdiction of the University Publishing Guidelines. It was also claimed that 2) one of the email recipients was not a member of the department, so I had been “airing dirty laundry,” or something, outside the department. It was further pointed out that 3) some of my strongly worded statements could be interpreted as Defamation.

Let us address point 1:

The University Code of Conduct states that “…[s]ending electronic mail to a bulletin board or even to a list of recipients constitutes publishing the contents….” (in their Acceptable Use of IT Facilities, bullet point 3).

To me, “list of recipients” does not refer to some number of individual email addresses, but to one or more email addresses which are, in their nature, intended to distribute email to a wide group of people. For example, the email address everybody@someuniversity might send to all students at Some University. Sending an email to this single email address, then, would constitute “sending to a list of recipients,” as far as I can tell. I have written to the University seeking clarification of this point.

Interestingly, this policy is meant to govern the use of University resources. I happen to send all of my email through my private email address, not via the use of University resources. Certainly, as a student, the case could be made that I am subject to the policy, particularly when I am addressing other members of the University. So, I may be governed by the intent of this policy, yet not by the letter of it, in this case.

This is merely a quibble, though, and should not detract from my main point, which is that my sending an email to three members of my department does not constitute having published anything.

Let us address point 2:

All 3 recipients of my email are listed as academic staff at my department’s homepage. I fail to see how I could distinguish one as being not of our department, no matter where they happen to maintain their office space.

Let us address point 3:

Defamation assumes that my statements were false. We would need to test this, in order to determine this to be the case. Defamation also implies harm … which is very difficult to quantify, in this instance, because the intended audience for the email was only three people (no matter that one of them forwarded it along to the acting director of the department). Surely, if harm was done, I did not intend for it to be so, as I sent the email to three people whom I thought I could trust to discuss the matter discreetly. The defamation, then, would have to has been committed not by me, but by the individual who forwarded the email.

Basically, what it all boils down to is that I’ve been bad, by having an opinion which didn’t align with that of the acting director of the department. I should be good, apparently, and keep my mouth shut about things of which I am “ill informed.”

We’ll let slide that I was speaking about the organizational structure of my department, and that I have specialized training in organizational development. We’ll also let slide that the people about whom I was speaking are, essentially, engaged in the practice of IT, and that I also have a Master’s degree in managing just these type of people and their projects. It’s just overkill to say that I’ve been developing custom information systems for 15 years, and that I have a handful of professional certifications on top of my degree in the field.

I can even let slide the power-play tactics, of calling me in for a meeting which is “not a formal disciplinary meeting,” and that I was called in along with my PhD supervisor. Letting me stew about that for three days, over the weekend, was annoying, but just let me get a better handle on what could possibly be at stake, so that didn’t work as planned, either. Letting me sit in the office for 5 minutes prior to the meeting … that just made me laugh. I mean, really: who does that?

No, what gets me about the whole thing is that, to wrap up the meeting, I was told that they didn’t want to stifle debate, and that they’re an open department. Yup. Right.

Me: messenger. Message: ignored. Messenger: shot at, but not hit.

I made similar points to these at the meeting, at one point asking, point-blank, what they were hoping to accomplish in talking to me as they were. They had no answer for that, so I concluded that I was simply to lay down, let them take their pound of flesh, and move on with my morning. Which I did.

Will I get myself in trouble like this again? Probably. Will this make me a better email writer? It may make me examine things to see whether what I’m saying can possibly be misconstrued, but I don’t think it’ll change my behavior very much. I’m pretty well set in my ways, and those include saying the things that people don’t really want to hear

– at least, they do in those areas in which I have professional expertise. That’s been part of my value to the organizations for whom I’ve provided consulting: I’m outside the loop, don’t see things the same way as everyone else sees them, and I’m not afraid to speak my mind.

Will I forget this? Never in a million years. Will I smile and go on to be a model student? I hope they think so.

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