LY #126 Consequences of Being Yourself

In my last post I wrote about a rude remark I made being interpreted in an unexpected manner.  On Monday I spoke to the person at whom the remark was thrown and he didn't even remember it.  He thought that my mention of it was an attempt to get him to read my blog! 

Well.  Perhaps. 

 But in my head I was just "checking in" to make sure I hadn't actually offended my young colleague.  As I noted in my last post, relaxing my guard and "being myself" are at times in opposition to being a professional.  I am in a profession that, like most, has certain rules about behavior.  Many of these rules are not written down.  They are assumed.  As in this paragraph in the Human Resources Procedures manual:

"Central Oregon Community College must maintain an atmosphere that encourages the full realization of each individual's potential. This effort is promoted by professionalism in the relationships that faculty and staff have with students and each other. These relationships are intended to foster a free and open exchange of ideas, productive learning, and the work that supports it."

What behaviors are included in the concept, "professionalism"?  The paragraphs below this one make it clear that one aspect of professionalism is reporting one's "romantic" relationship with anyone over whom one has authority (students, staff, or junior faculty) to "the appropriate College officers." 

Another aspect of professionalism would seem to be not harassing anyone  "based on his/her age, disability, gender, marital status, national origin, color, race, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status."  But what constitutes harassment?  Is it what a "reasonable person" of the group being insulted thinks?  What is a "reasonable person"?  I went to the website of the Society for Human Resource Management, but found only descriptions of situations and assumptions rather than a definition.   According to Granovsky and Sundaresh, "Super Lawyers," "A 'reasonable person' can vary with the judge. The concept is meant to approximate what an average person would do in the plaintiff’s situation."  Farris, Riley and Pitt would disagree about the concept of "average" for they note that the "reasonable person" is "above average, always obeys the law, always makes the right decision."

All of which brings me to a recent story in the Chronicle of Higher Education about a fracas around perceptions of unprofessional behavior by a professor who sent out an email and the student who made hay with it.  One sent out an email laying blame on Republicans for lack of access to important online databases during the sequester.  The other "broadcast" a screenshot of the email.  Talk radio, university administrators, fellow faculty and others got involved.  Much threatening, flapping about, yelling, whining, and bloviating on all sides ensued.  Mistakes were made.  The long article gives an overview of each side's point of view and makes clear that there was nothing in the university's policies and procedures to show that any rules were broken:

"Nothing in its handbook had clearly barred Ms. Slocum from sending her government-shutdown email, nothing in its student code barred Ms. Johnson from distributing that email far and wide, and nothing in its policies spelled out an obvious response to the furor the professor’s words had caused."

So one moral one can take from this story is a warning about being oneself in the professional setting.  Comments that seem right and true or that simply seem innocuous may be a match to the lighter fluid in another person's head.  As I suggested in my speech class last week, this is one of the main reasons I'm looking forward to retirement.