Received this beauty in my work inbox today. Nope, not spam. Went to all new students, and select administration.
This is entirely on me and my vagueness as to why I found this mildly infuriating, but I’m really intrigued by the variety of takes you all have shared. I say this as a compliment!
I’ve been working in higher education for too long, probably because I like the work, and the ability to exist in a forum where I can think creatively while influencing the future for good (as if goodness still exists, but I digress). So I guess you can say I care about my work. Hate the place. Hate the system Like the work.
The most infuriating part exists well ahead of this particular email from the Dean of Students (whom holds their recently defended Ed.D from where they work). Education from this private university is not worth the money or time, especially when they don’t honor the education received from themselves for themselves. Because private and the _ reality of it all_ (I suppose), promotion only exists in who you blow. I have three degrees, and am actively working on my PhD, with over two decades employed by the university, having received the highest honor an employee can receive from their time and performance at the university (a revered award akin to outstanding achievement), and am just universally liked (their words, not mine). So when I was passed for promotion when the longstanding department head retired, I was advised it was because the guy who got it had an Ed.D and I only had a Master’s (in org leadership, from where we work). So I’d at least fall in line as number 2, I was advised. Nope. New guy gave it to his buddy who he shares the same countertops at home with. This buddy, with the countertops, and fewer years with the university, has but a high school diploma from the local HS. Their families hangout on the holidays. It’s not just the countertops.
The particular human embodiment of AI slop who penned the prose in my post is another example of wrong peg, wrong hole. Placed in the position because of their relationship to another employee, and skirted through the Ed.D program at work with unusual ease and speed, this is how we present ourselves to our money. Then when enrollment drops, we’re quick to point to “nationwide trends” instead of “we provide education so void of value, we don’t even care when we have people with our own pinnacle tier of education producing word art regardless of platform or messaging service to the students (read money ) while at the same time neglecting to promote proven effort and skill into leadership positions of those also with educations from the university.”
That’s the mildly infuriating part, for me at least. 😬
Has nothing to do with the actually training. That’s annual formality stuff for just about all employed Americans.
Is the issue the “varieity” misspelling? Because otherwise this kind of email is normal and you probably should take those modules seriously, since sexual harassment and alcohol abuse are important issues.
The whole email is fucked. The sentences don’t make sense.
I don’t get why this is infuriating? Any job that you take is going to have you take the same training about diversity, sexual harassment, etc. I don’t see anything in the email saying that this training is going to cost you anything extra.
Are you just pissed off that there’s so many grammar and spelling mistakes in an email sent from a university? They probably used AI to write it or it was written by the outsourced vendor that provides the training materials.
AI would write better, with no weird spelling errors, this is human slop. But honestly, who cares, you can skim it and get the point.
Any job that you take is going to have you take the same training about diversity, sexual harassment, etc
It is? I have never had to take such classes… maybe that’s an American thing?
I can also see being pissed about my time being wasted, especially if I had paid for being there… which is in itself outrageous.
Am an American with a (remote) office job, can confirm. Not only do they make you take the classes, they make you retake them every year. I usually don’t mind though because it means I get to chill out and game for a couple hours while I let the videos play on mute.
Yup it is part of the annual code of conduct training at my work.
I also had to attend sexual harassment and alcohol abuse lectures as a part of freshman orientation at my university back 20ish years ago. It didn’t cost extra, so I’m not sure what the title is referring to. The title makes it seem like they are infuriated by the required training in general, which really doesn’t make much sense to me.
It’s so they can deny responsibility for an incident because the perpetrator took the training.
Actually, not even that. The reason they do it here is because it’s required by law. They get fined pretty heavily per instance. (“Here” is Minnesota, it depends on the state your in,)
In UK. I have to do 4-5 mandatory online training courses on stuff like this every year. There is harassment/bullying/ not being a dick, health and safety, data protection, money laundering, diversity, maybe more.
Similar for several jobs over the last 10-15 years. Ever since they could develop online courses to do it cheaply.
They still pay me for my time, so what do i care. And I have seen an external consultant get more or less banned from working with us site due to bullying our staff once. It was awesome.
If i was a student/customer I might object to some of that, but all institutions have rules and codes of conduct. Better to know about them up front, rather than find out later and get expelled. It should be offered pre-enrolment though.
deleted by creator
Paying money doesn’t mean you get to harass other students who also paid money… Maybe that’s your first lesson.
Usually typos are the result of multiple people having their own template form that only gets sent to their initializing accounts. It’s not an unforgivable one though if it gets the point across (it does). They probably don’t get many replies on that one since not agreeing to T9 is reason for removal from most roles including publicly funded college students.
Every university in the US has this. It’s required by Title 9.
I remember back in grad school they told us we would have to take an ethics seminar and I thought it might be something interesting about the role of a scientist in society or something like that, but it was actually pretty much just “Don’t have sex with the undergraduates, even though technically there isn’t a strict rule against it.”
I’d just ignore that, and if questioned, say you assumed it was spam based on the poor grammar.
You have to pay 10k for a sexual assault module? I can teach you all about it for $20
For $100 I WON’T teach you about it.
