Student Netiquette 'Just About Right'

As increased access, much of it by way of the internet, continues to erode the walls of decorum between students and faculty, some professors across the nation are calling for more defensive driving on the information superhighway.

But Harvard professors say that for the most part, their students have been obeying the rules of the road.

Professor of Psychology Richard J. McNally said that while he’d “heard stories about [professors] being bombarded with e-mail,” he hadn’t dealt with inappropriate messages.

“I have, for the most part not found students to be intrusive,” he said.

But Assistant Anthropology Professor Lamia N. Karim at the University of Oregon felt the need to add reminders about proper e-mail etiquette to her course syllabus.

Karim said a recent New York Times article about the subject made her realize that “this was not an isolated phenomenon, but much wider.”

“I wanted to make the use of e-mail communication more efficient,” Karim said of the reasoning behind her syllabus addition.

“I was getting a lot of mundane messages,” Karim added, citing requests for the next day’s reading assignments and directions to the local bookstore among them.

But in his twenty-plus years of teaching, Harvard College Professor and Clowes Professor of Science Robert P. Kirshner said that with a few exceptions, his “experience [with e-mail] has been almost uniformly positive.”

“It’s a good channel. Students are much more likely to send you an e-mail than come to office hours,” Kirshner said.

Kirshner said that e-mail has brought the student-professor relationship to a level that is “just about right.”

“Most of my e-mails with students have been very constructive,” he said.

But Karim noted that at the University of Oregon, she began seeing messages with “Hey you” and “Yo” as the salutation, leading her to insert the gentle reminder in her syllabi.

While she encourages students to meet with her and to ask “relevant questions” over e-mail, Karim expressed some concerns about the impact of e-mail on the professor-student relationship. In this modern age of the internet, “professors are often seen as caretakers and not just professors,” Karim said.

But Leverett Professor of Physics Gerald Gabrielse said that for the most part, he has been “pleased” with his correspondence and that e-mail facilitated student-professor communication.

“For the most part, e-mail helps student-professor relationships,” Gabrielse said.

“There are some Harvard students that are afraid to talk to a professor about anything,” Gabrielse said. “E-mail provides a way to break down those barriers.”

He credited the student support available at Harvard for cutting down on inappropriate e-mail, citing Physics Night at Leverett House, the TF system, and course web pages as strengths.

“These things allow teachers to focus on the essentials of teaching and learning,” Gabrielse said.

For the most part, McNally said the majority of his e-mail troubles arose from high school students and undergraduates unaffiliated with Harvard. “I really get bombarded with queries from students at other universities looking for advice for applying to graduate schools,” he said.

And Kirshner recalled one instance where student e-mail had been particularly problematic.

“There was one case where a student was really sending me a lot of notes and wouldn’t take yes, or no, for an answer,” he said.