Spring Break
An open letter to Faculty
Ron Bishop
Issue date: 4/20/07 Section: Ed-Op
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Colleagues:
She would be in the third week of her third term at Drexel. A newly-minted communications major, she was a student in my fall section of COM 111 (Fundamentals of Communication). Her first paper for the class was excellent; in it she eloquently described the communication styles she observed in her large, sometimes frantic Italian family. She proudly complemented her descriptions with a small Italian flag above the paper's title.
Then, about two weeks into the term, she stopped coming to class. At first I thought she might have been sick, or just blowing off class, even though she was already a regular contributor to our sometimes far-ranging class discussions.
I emailed her a couple of times. I assured her I wasn't angry about the missed classes. I told her we could work together to make sure she caught up on missed work and that she should contact me if there was anything I could do to help her get back on track.
No response. I asked a few of the folks in our class if they had seen or heard from her - nothing.
I unintentionally let her slip down my mental priority list as the term went on. Another email, which now seems so perfunctory, followed from me later in the term. Still, I continued to wonder what had happened to her even as I filed her final grade.
Then, in January, the editor of the Triangle asked for my advice (I'm the paper's faculty advisor) about a story concerning a Drexel freshman who had reportedly given birth to a baby and left it in the trunk of a car. After finding the baby's body, police searched a dorm room in Van Rennselaer Hall. The baby's mother reportedly told friends on her floor that she was leaving to visit a relative in the hospital. But among the items found by police in the Van R dorm room was a pamphlet titled Denial of Pregnancy.
I advised the editor not to run the young woman's name until the Philadelphia Police Department had done so. Clearly this was a troubled young person whose privacy should be protected, at least until additional facts had been gathered. A few days later, however, a local news outlet ran her name.
She would be in the third week of her third term at Drexel. A newly-minted communications major, she was a student in my fall section of COM 111 (Fundamentals of Communication). Her first paper for the class was excellent; in it she eloquently described the communication styles she observed in her large, sometimes frantic Italian family. She proudly complemented her descriptions with a small Italian flag above the paper's title.
Then, about two weeks into the term, she stopped coming to class. At first I thought she might have been sick, or just blowing off class, even though she was already a regular contributor to our sometimes far-ranging class discussions.
I emailed her a couple of times. I assured her I wasn't angry about the missed classes. I told her we could work together to make sure she caught up on missed work and that she should contact me if there was anything I could do to help her get back on track.
No response. I asked a few of the folks in our class if they had seen or heard from her - nothing.
I unintentionally let her slip down my mental priority list as the term went on. Another email, which now seems so perfunctory, followed from me later in the term. Still, I continued to wonder what had happened to her even as I filed her final grade.
Then, in January, the editor of the Triangle asked for my advice (I'm the paper's faculty advisor) about a story concerning a Drexel freshman who had reportedly given birth to a baby and left it in the trunk of a car. After finding the baby's body, police searched a dorm room in Van Rennselaer Hall. The baby's mother reportedly told friends on her floor that she was leaving to visit a relative in the hospital. But among the items found by police in the Van R dorm room was a pamphlet titled Denial of Pregnancy.
I advised the editor not to run the young woman's name until the Philadelphia Police Department had done so. Clearly this was a troubled young person whose privacy should be protected, at least until additional facts had been gathered. A few days later, however, a local news outlet ran her name.
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