{"id":23919,"date":"2020-08-03T12:15:49","date_gmt":"2020-08-03T16:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=23919"},"modified":"2020-08-03T12:15:49","modified_gmt":"2020-08-03T16:15:49","slug":"cas-tells-faculty-to-avoid-certain-topics-in-communications-to-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2020\/08\/03\/cas-tells-faculty-to-avoid-certain-topics-in-communications-to-students\/","title":{"rendered":"CAS Tells Faculty to Avoid Certain Topics in Communications to Students"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/869458522&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true&amp;visual=true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc; line-break: anywhere; word-break: normal; overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap; text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif; font-weight: 100;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/wtbu\" title=\"wtbu\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wtbu<\/a> \u00b7 <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/wtbu\/cas-tells-faculty-to-avoid-certain-topics-in-emails-to-students\" title=\"CAS Tells Faculty to Avoid Certain Topics in Emails to Students\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">CAS Tells Faculty to Avoid Certain Topics in Emails to Students<\/a><\/div>\n<p>By Grace Ferguson<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Boston University\u2019s College of Arts and Sciences has issued guidance for how faculty should communicate with students before classes start, telling professors to \u201ckeep it positive\u201d and avoid mentioning pandemic-related challenges.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">CAS Associate Dean Joe Bizup sent out the guidance in an <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1rBpNB8oqlChGZCc6sCoPQiynZxnvNb3i\/view?usp=sharing\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">email<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to CAS department chairs on Wednesday, July 29.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many students are expecting emails from their professors this month about the format of their classes. Most classes at BU will be taught in a hybrid format, but that could look different for each class. Some classes will be fully online, and a few will require in-person participation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But, while the main purpose of emailing students is to let them know about class formats, Bizup asked faculty to consider another purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cCrafting these sorts of communications can be rhetorically challenging because they must work not only to inform but also to assure and reassure,\u201d Bizup wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The dean urged faculty to reach out to students with information about their classes as soon as possible. Bizup mentioned that deadlines for housing and tuition payments were approaching, but the guidance also told faculty to avoid mentioning the idea of financial value.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bizup wrote that these kinds of emails can help students \u201cfeel comfortable and excited about matriculating to BU.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The guidance discouraged mentions of masks and social distancing. It also said professors should avoid talking about uncertainty\u2014Bizup wrote that it\u2019s better to be vague.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another theme in the guidance was that faculty shouldn\u2019t reveal the reasons for the structure or format of their classes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One reason a class\u2019s format might be different is because the professor was granted a workplace adjustment\u2014BU has allowed some professors at a high risk for COVID-19 to teach online this semester.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bizup wrote that workplace adjustments should not be revealed because they are private information. He went on to write that professors should instead emphasize the benefits of the online format, like how asynchronous lectures can accommodate for different time zones.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some faculty have called the guidance an unusual move, and Daniel Star is one of them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Star is a BU philosophy professor who contributed to an open letter this summer, protesting BU\u2019s hybrid reopening. Now, he runs a blog called \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/allcaution.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With All Due Caution<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,\u201d where he advocates for faculty and continues to protest the reopening.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt\u2019s our understanding that professors should honor their duties as teachers, to talk about issues truthfully, and communicate with their students as they see fit regarding their courses,\u201d Star said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Star said the email was shocking to some faculty because the university doesn\u2019t normally tell professors what they should or shouldn\u2019t say to students. To him, it looked like BU was asking professors to add a certain spin to their communications.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The professor said he thinks it\u2019s appropriate for the university to have a public relations strategy, but that shouldn\u2019t fall on faculty.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThat\u2019s not the job of the individual teachers\u2014our job is very different,\u201d Star said. \u201cAnd I also think there\u2019s no way this could ever succeed, so it\u2019s very odd they would send this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mary Battenfeld is another CAS professor, in the American and New England Studies Program. She had a similar opinion of the email.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Battenfeld said it\u2019s not her job to \u201cassure and reassure\u201d students, as the guidance told her to do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI feel like it was deceitful, and that\u2014as someone who believes that establishing a relationship of trust and truth with students is one of the ways I become a good teacher\u2014that it\u2019s suggesting I should not do that,\u201d Battenfeld said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Battenfeld thought financial motivations were behind the guidance, and they have driven most of the university\u2019s decisions on reopening. The impression she got from the email was that the university doesn\u2019t think students will put down tuition deposits if they hear too much about masks and social distancing from their professors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI respect students enough to think they can deal with the hard issues, and this email presents a version of students who cannot deal with hard issues,\u201d Battenfeld said.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>wtbu \u00b7 CAS Tells Faculty to Avoid Certain Topics in Emails to Students By Grace Ferguson &nbsp; Boston University\u2019s College of Arts and Sciences has issued guidance for how faculty should communicate with students before classes start, telling professors to \u201ckeep it positive\u201d and avoid mentioning pandemic-related challenges. CAS Associate Dean Joe Bizup sent out [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18157,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1597,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23919"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23920,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23919\/revisions\/23920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}