29 "Threats"

I've been cleaning out my files at school and ran across a folder labeled "Threats."  In it are two pieces of "evidence" of students who really hated me because of their perception that I attacked them verbally. 

One is a photocopy of a set of interpersonal communication journal entries from a student I had back in the early 90s in which he calls me (the only person who was going to read these writings) an incompetent, angry, feministic man-hater.  He was also a Wiccan who also thought I probably hated people of the "Wise Craft".  I kept a photocopy of the journal because it mentions how sick he is of people attacking him for being a white male and that he should file a lawsuit.  He was mostly angry at a woman who was part of his classroom small group but he considered me his attacker for a comment I'd made about the skit his team performed.  What perturbed me most about the journal was the intensity of the feeling, the repetition of concerns, and the choice of using a classroom assignment to rage at the person reading it.  When I responded to his journal (giving the original copy of it back to him at the final) I finished by saying, "I appreciate your honesty in this journal.  I just wish your group had come to me when you started having problems with D.  I could have given her an assignment to take her out of the group if I had known about all your troubles. . . . You show an understanding of the materials.  Chapters 7 - 10 A."

Over the years, a few other students have used the journal or other classroom assignments as a forum for passive-aggressive criticism of me or my grading decisions.  The other piece of "evidence" in this file is a letter from a woman who tossed so many threats back and forth with one of her teammates in small group communication that Bart Q. had to be called in to help me mediate.  In her final report on her team experience she actually wrote about me (not in second but in third person) as a badly dressed, self-absorbed incompetent.  I'll give her two of those three, certainly.  But it was her style of delivery that was irritating.

Now, was the heavyset ex-felon who came in to complain about a grade and managed to share, during the discussion, that he was an ex-heroin salesman and user and that he'd been in the clink for killing someone, trying to scare me or just sharing who he was?  I don't know his motivation for self-disclosure.  I do know that I was the last one in the building and I really wanted him out of my office.  

But such experiences have been rare.  Far rarer for me than for some of my other colleagues, especially those who teach psychology. Over the years I seem to have discouraged most of the passive aggressive communicators by telling students about my own problem of being an "insensitive listener."   I tell them I just don't take hints.  And the more open I've been about my insensitivity, the less likely I've been to receive passive-aggressive comments.  I encourage students (and others) to ask directly for what they want. 

Now, I understand that this particular request reveals my own communication bias towards masculine/Western style of communication.  I know that speaking in a linear, straightforward manner is easier for some than for others.  And, really, when it comes to students, I do try to guess at what they want and ask about what they want in most situations when they are having trouble speaking directly.  But not when the indirection contains a hidden attack on me.  In those cases, I just won't hear it.  Even though I do.

Now, to drop this old "Threats" file into the recycling.