University students have enough to deal with, without having their parents treat them like babies or interfering in their lives. The following email was intended to go to the scholarship committee of an organization I belonged to at the time. For one thing, I would never start "To Whom it May Concern" and that tipped me off right away, as absentminded as I am. It is a fraudulent letter of recommendation written by the student's mother using my name and email address, so of course the email message came to me rather than the scholarship committee. Silly mother.
To Whom it May Concern:
I would gladly recommend _________ for the ______ scholarship. _______ has been a student of mine and has shown his ability to commit to the tasks assigned and work hard as a member of group projects as well.
With the challenges of college courses, as well as both personal and school activities, it is refreshing to see students that are willing to work hard and stay focused. _________ has shown that he has interest in both learning and doing well at school.
I am sure that _________ will excel at whatever he does, and that he will take pride in his work as well as his achievements.
Sincerely,
_______________
As I was puzzling over the fact that I never wrote this email and how it came to be, I received another email message from the student's mother.
Prof _________ - I have just done something totally unacceptable and __________ is not even aware. I have to apologize and hope that you will not hold this against _______. This is ________________, ___________'s mom, and I have written the below message in the attempt to meet a deadline for a scholarship.
_______________ is not aware of this being done and I will call and explain it to him, as soon as I complete this e-mail message.
There is NO ACCEPTABLE EXCUSE for me doing this.
________ is writing the essay, to complete the scholarship requirement. He has one scholarship letter of recommendation, but I was reading the guidelines and it will require 2 from the University.
I will discuss with ___________ and we will not proceed with the application for scholarship!!
This is the worse offense, I admit, and I cannot say how sorry I am. This is not something I would do, nor ever want ___________ to do. I have raised _________ to be a very honest and hard working person. This is definitely something I am ashamed of, but will discuss with ___________ so he will understand the consequences of doing something dishonest.
I suppose it was a positive thing that I hit the send button and you received the e-mail; because it has prevented me from actually using something that you did not create.
I would like to explain some of the circumstances, that caused my lapse in honesty & integrity; however, I do not accept it as being a reason for doing something this bad. My father is terminally ill and I have been spending as much time as possible traveling between my family in __________ and my parents in __________. The deadline has crept upon us too fast, and I wanted ________ to be able to qualify for the scholarship.
Again, this is no excuse and I will not proceed with the scholarship application. Please understand this is not something ___________ had any hand in doing. Both he and I share the e-mail address and I am just sick that I was attempting to do something so bad.
I know ________ will be mortified. He will be upset that I have now humiliated him, in front of you; and be upset that I would do something so stupid. Facing _________ is another punishment that I deserve.
Please let me know if you would like me to call and talk to you. I would be more than willing to meet with you and if there is anything else you need me to do; I will do whatever necessary. I cannot believe that I would attempt to do something so horrible.
______________
My response to the mother:
I had a talk with __________ to determine his part. Hopefully both you and he realize the seriousness of writing something with the intent to mislead (also known as fraud), especially since the topic of our class last week was about ethics in writing. Because I can understand the desires of a mother to help her son, I have decided not to pursue any kind of action against you or ________, although I will alert the University Writing Program director that this happened. I do wish you and your son well.
--
_____________________
Her response back to me:
Thank you for responding to my e-mail. I have been very upset over this matter, and I do not think that anything has upset me more. I am upset at myself for doing such a thing and upset that I would put my son in such an uncomfortable position. _______ did mention that he spoke with you. __________ also mentioned that you had covered the topic of ethics in class. I know better than to do such a thing and please believe that I have never done such a thing and will never do it again.
Again I apologize and thank you for not taking further action against ____________. I would hate to see him penalized for an action that I committed.
Thanks
____________
Showing posts with label crazy emails. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crazy emails. Show all posts
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Crazy Parents of Students
So, I just received an email from the disgruntled parent of one of my university students. The initial reason for her writing to me is absolutely my fault. I made not one, but two mistakes with her grade that gave her a failing grade in my class. After going over her grades as soon as school started again this semester and the student came back from vacation, we have determined that she actually got a C, so I am doing a change of grade form for her. Her mother was so frustrated, maybe because I wanted to see the actual assignments with the grades I wrote on them before doing the grade change, that she sent the following email to me and I have to admit, it made me laugh because it is so dripping with uninformed impotent ichor.
The mother wrote:
I was very disappointed to learn of the disorganized state of your records as they pertain to the above-referenced student. I can only assume that others have suffered at your hand, as well. I intend to report this to your superiors, as it is unacceptable, and certainly beneath ______ standards. I also intend to report comments I understand you have made in class related to people's political and sexual orientations. This is not in keeping with professional behavior expected of one in your position, and certainly not in keeping with ________ standards. I regret having been placed in this position, but in order to prevent another student being put in the position my daughter has been put in, I feel it is the right thing to do, and anything less would be dishonorable.
Even though I refuse to deal with parents, just the students (for legal privacy reasons as well as ethical reasons), I did answer with the following (as near as I can remember):
So sorry you feel the need to be so mean hearted. Sometimes parents get over-excited and say things they later regret. Unfortunately, email allows people to say things they would never dream of saying to a person's face. Your daughter is a grown-up and is handling this situation in a mature manner. We have come to an equitable solution. All it requires is a grade change form and each of us taking responsibility for our own mistakes.
I could have said, but did not, that a part of the reason she got the bad grades is that she didn't turn in all assignments and she wasn't in class all the time and another part is that the last week of school I was sick enough I should have stayed home, but I had to finish out the semester, so the mistakes probably occurred because of my illness. The combination was a bad one, but no lasting harm done once the change of grade form is turned in. I also didn't say that the daughter was behaving in a more mature manner than her mother and her mother's behavior bodes ill for her daughter's continuing maturity. I'm not terribly worried, because this is the first time in many years of teaching that anything like this has happened, but I will be interested to see if my department chair wants to talk with me. He probably gets way too many disgruntled parent emails.
The part of the email that made me laugh right out loud is the sentence on talking about politics and sexual orientation in class. Right. It was a literature class and we discussed formalism, structuralism, reader response theory, postmodernism, deconstructionism, culturalism, neo-historicism, and here's the kicker, Marxism, feminism, and gender theory. Since the last three are legitimate literary theories, it would have been remiss not to discuss them and I cannot imagine how we could not talk about politics or sexual orientation, although I was careful not to state a political position of my own.
This entry is getting too long, so I will post another crazy parent's email in another post.
The mother wrote:
I was very disappointed to learn of the disorganized state of your records as they pertain to the above-referenced student. I can only assume that others have suffered at your hand, as well. I intend to report this to your superiors, as it is unacceptable, and certainly beneath ______ standards. I also intend to report comments I understand you have made in class related to people's political and sexual orientations. This is not in keeping with professional behavior expected of one in your position, and certainly not in keeping with ________ standards. I regret having been placed in this position, but in order to prevent another student being put in the position my daughter has been put in, I feel it is the right thing to do, and anything less would be dishonorable.
Even though I refuse to deal with parents, just the students (for legal privacy reasons as well as ethical reasons), I did answer with the following (as near as I can remember):
So sorry you feel the need to be so mean hearted. Sometimes parents get over-excited and say things they later regret. Unfortunately, email allows people to say things they would never dream of saying to a person's face. Your daughter is a grown-up and is handling this situation in a mature manner. We have come to an equitable solution. All it requires is a grade change form and each of us taking responsibility for our own mistakes.
I could have said, but did not, that a part of the reason she got the bad grades is that she didn't turn in all assignments and she wasn't in class all the time and another part is that the last week of school I was sick enough I should have stayed home, but I had to finish out the semester, so the mistakes probably occurred because of my illness. The combination was a bad one, but no lasting harm done once the change of grade form is turned in. I also didn't say that the daughter was behaving in a more mature manner than her mother and her mother's behavior bodes ill for her daughter's continuing maturity. I'm not terribly worried, because this is the first time in many years of teaching that anything like this has happened, but I will be interested to see if my department chair wants to talk with me. He probably gets way too many disgruntled parent emails.
The part of the email that made me laugh right out loud is the sentence on talking about politics and sexual orientation in class. Right. It was a literature class and we discussed formalism, structuralism, reader response theory, postmodernism, deconstructionism, culturalism, neo-historicism, and here's the kicker, Marxism, feminism, and gender theory. Since the last three are legitimate literary theories, it would have been remiss not to discuss them and I cannot imagine how we could not talk about politics or sexual orientation, although I was careful not to state a political position of my own.
This entry is getting too long, so I will post another crazy parent's email in another post.
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