Retriever sent along this NYT story about Harvard administrators reading the emails of Resident Deans, lecturers who are not tenure-track professors.
Follow closely. The initial outrage seems to be about "creepy" electronic surveillance and invasion of privacy. Yet as you read on, you find that it would generally be okay to do that to staff, but not faculty - and profs are considering Resident Deans faculty in this instance.
Wow. You can think it's allowable that an employer reads the emails on its account (as is true where I work), or you can think email should be private. But to think it's okay to read the emails of some employees - I mean, who cares, really? - but not others, that's some entitlement.
3 comments:
That's what I was reading in that story today, too -- an argument over whether faculty become "staff" when they serve as resident deans. Amazing.
Every business or University that has provided me with an email account has had a piece of fine print in the Policy Document stating that my use of that service is not "private".
However, the events which might cause HR (or members of the Administration) to look at email are usually spelled out somewhere.
I agree, the switch from privacy to privacy for the lords and knights, but not for the knights' pages is pretty jarring.
Once more those who think they are (or should be) entitled are just LIVID when they find they are not.
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