The University of British Columbia
Faculty of Law | 1822 East Mall, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z1
Tel: (604) 822-3151 | Fax: (604) 822-8108
April 24, 2002
Ms Cynthia Maughan
#302 – 1785 Esquimalt Avenue
West Vancouver, B.C.
V7V 1R7
Dear Ms Maughan:
On Thursday, April 10, 2002, the Senate Committee on Appeals on Academic Standing met to hear your appeal. You were appealing from the decision made by Associate Dean Ann Rose on behalf of the Faculty of Graduate Studies on October 29, 2001. In the decision, Dr. Rose confirmed the mark of 73% awarded to you in ENGL 533 by the instructor, Dr. Lorraine Weir, over your objection that you had been penalized for not attending a class on Sunday, March 11, 2001, which you felt was contrary to UBC Policy #65: Religious Holidays.
The relief you sought might not seem very significant, as you only sought to raise your mark from 73% to 79%, but you felt you were bringing forward a test case on a point of principle regarding Sunday observance. You wished to elucidate for the benefit of other Christian students on campus the proper procedure for making official objection on religious grounds to classes scheduled on a Sunday.
At the Senate Committee hearing, you represented yourself. Dr. Rose represented the Faculty of Graduate Studies and the Department of English. Dr. Susanna Egan, graduate advisor in the department, and Dr. Weir gave evidence in opposition to the ground of your appeal.
At the hearing you based your appeal solely on the ground that Dr. Weir penalized you for your absence from a course colloquium held on Sunday, March 11, 2001. You felt that you had made known to Dr. Weir your conscientious objection based on Sunday observance to attending the colloquium. Furthermore, you felt that the colloquium had been scheduled for the home of a fellow graduate student with whom you did not have cordial relations due to an open disagreement in the previous November involving your religious convictions. The disagreement had been aired among graduate students in the English Department over a common list server, and classmates had taken sides in the debate. At the hearing Dr. Weir professed to have been completely unaware of the dispute until you informed her about it, and you did not contradict her on this point.
[UBC Senate Decision — Page 2]
Following the hearing, the Senate Committee deliberated, and by a majority decided to dismiss your appeal. The majority concluded that you had not shown any violation of Policy #65, or denial of your religious freedom.
Later that evening, I left voice messages for you and Dr. Rose to inform you both promptly about the outcome of your appeal. Subsequently, I exchanged voice-messages with you and Dr. Rose, and you and I have had two telephone conversations in which you sought reassurance of the Senate Committee’s grasp of the issues. As I have reiterated, the Senate Committee follows up short, immediate telephone calls advising the parties of the outcome of the appeal with more extensive written reasons. I hope this letter will help to explain the Senate Committee’s reasons more thoroughly.
Briefly stated, the appeal arose out of the following circumstances. Your transcript indicates that you attended the University of Toronto, transferred to UBC and graduated with a B.A. (Majors in English (Literature) and Psychology), on November 17, 1999. For the Winter Session 1999-2000, you were admitted into the Faculty of Graduate Studies, and began an MA program in the English Department. During your undergraduate studies you had taken a course with Dr. Weir. As a result, you and Dr. Weir had become acquainted with each other, and you were quite sure that Dr. Weir had knowledge that you were a professing Christian.
The graduate students in the English Department maintained a list server (english-grad@unixg.ubc.ca) which was a medium by which Dr. Egan as graduate adviser posted announcements to the graduate students (pp. A-40, A-70). More recently, however, students sought to enliven the list server by posting provocative or controversial messages for dissemination to all classmates, and debate. Students expanded the list server into a forum for freely exchanging opinion and other more personal messages. At the hearing, Dr. Egan objected to your disclosure of these messages in your appeal documents as violating students’ privacy. Nevertheless, anyone who posts a message to a list server that is known to and accessible by many others for purposes of debate without even a password cannot reasonably expect much, if any, regard for their privacy over postings. Moreover, you were unaware that disclosure in the circumstances of an academic appeal could be regarded as infringing privacy or academic freedom. Therefore, the Senate Committee admitted the messages in the appeal.
Furthermore, the Senate Committee found the messages were relevant to establish the “religious” nature of your disagreement with the student who posted the message that offended you, and to explain why you felt as you did about the events that transpired during January and February, 2001 that were central to the appeal. The venue of the ENGL 553 class (“colloquium”) you refused to attend was the home of the student whose message had thrust you into a heated debate with him and some of your classmates.
The ill-will between you and the other student arose in the following circumstances. In November 2000, the Canadian Alliance Party held a fundraiser in Vancouver, and protesters demonstrated against the event. In the aftermath, a message from student activists in support of the protest was forwarded to the list server.
[UBC Senate Decision — Page 3]
The message justified the protest and criticised, as extremist and dangerous, views attributed to the Canadian Alliance Party, alleging linkages to hate-mongers. The message disparaged the conservative religious and political beliefs attributed to the leader of the day, Mr. Stockwell Day. Graduate students in the English Department began to post messages on the list server, taking various points of view on the accuracy and propriety of the message. Some messages cast aspersions on the “religious right.”
The student, who was not personally known to you at the time but whose home later became the venue for the colloquium in ENGL 553, posted a message advocating free speech, concluding that Mr. Day “makes me recall fondly a time period when Christians were stoned.” Other students, including yourself, rose to the bait, and took the student to task. On November 21, 2000, you posted a message in which you identified yourself as a Christian, explaining that you held your religious beliefs sacred, and took offence at those beliefs being mocked in the previous message. You said the sender did not intend to give offence but had exercised bad judgment. You said that Christians were members of all political parties, and were not bunched together on the “right.”
A flurry of messages from other graduate students in English complained that you were out-of-line for overreacting, infringing their academic freedom, and suppressing freedom of speech. You replied, refuting religious stereotyping, invoking university policy favouring tolerance and respect, and suggesting that students who wished to exchange messages that others might find offensive should do so on their own list server. The student whose message had offended you announced that he would create a new list server to escape from the current one’s stifling “officious quality” (p. A-68). You and others took the bait and enquired if the charge of “officiousness” was levelled at your point of view (pp. A-69 to 71). Since no denial of that implication was posted, you might reasonably assume that, indeed, the other student regarded your intervention as “officious.” The last e-mail on the subject was posted in the third week of November (p. A-73). While the debate was over, the issues continued to rankle you.
At p. A-7, you summarized your feelings towards the student who offended you for having “made anti-Christian joke in a serious & angry political statement sent to grad server list. Student declined to explain or apologize to students who responded with e-mails (myself included) expressing distress & concern over his statement.”
ENGL 553, Strategies in Literary Theory, began in January, 2001, and continued throughout Term 2 of the 2000-2001 Winter Session. The topic of the course was, ‘The … Proper’—from Derrida to Delgamuukw, very roughly paraphrased as an application of postmodernist critical literary theory to selected readings on aboriginal culture and to a significant Supreme Court of Canada decision on aboriginal land claims. Eleven students became registered in the course, including you and the student whose e-mail had initiated the exchange of e-mails the previous November. Besides you and the other major combatant in the e-mail exchanges, at least some classmates in ENGL 553 must have followed the debate and may have participated in it.
(UBC Senate Decision — Page 4)
When the course began and throughout the first 5 weeks, Dr. Weir as a faculty member who did not access the list server, was one of the few persons in the course who was unaware of the controversy.
Classes were scheduled to meet every Tuesday from the beginning of January to the end of the first week of April, 2001. The syllabus for the course described its requirements as follows:
Two papers: a shorter one (1500 words) due at the beginning of February (20/100) and a longer one (3000 words) due at the end of the seminar (60/100).
One brief (15 min.) oral presentation on some aspect of the text/s of the day (20/100).
Attendance at and regular participation in all seminar meetings.
At p. A-73, you described the schedule of the most significant classes for the purposes of the appeal as follows:
Tuesday, January 2, 2001; Introduction
Tuesday, January 9, 2001 Grammatology
Tuesday, January 16, 2001 Grammatology
Tuesday January 23, 2001 Limited, Inc.
Tuesday, January 30, 2001 On the Name
At the initial class, on January 2, 2001, Dr. Weir addressed administrative arrangements, and suggested to those in attendance, including yourself, that instead of scattering the brief oral presentations throughout the term, it would be more beneficial to hear all the presentations on one occasion. Everyone present assented to the suggestion. A date for this “colloquium” was necessary. It was suggested that a Sunday in early in March, 2001 would permit students to receive feedback in good time for revisions to their draft final papers, due on April 3, 2001. A student with family responsibilities suggested Sunday, March 11, 2001, as a convenient day, and no one objected. Dr. Weir invited those with concerns about these administrative arrangements to speak up or to e-mail her after class. She said she would go over the proposed arrangements in the next class to permit second thoughts about them.
In the second class, on January 9, 2001, at which you were also present, Dr. Weir confirmed the arrangements, in the absence of adverse comment by e-mail or from those attending the class in person.
In the third class, on January 16, 2001, Dr. Weir sought suggestions for a suitable venue for the colloquium in March, and the student with whom you previously engaged in the e-mail contretemps offered his home. Since the offer seemed generous, the location was convenient, and the acrimony between you and the proposed host was beneath the surface at the time, Dr. Weir accepted the offer and announced the venue. No concerns were voiced in the class.
As a result of these administrative arrangements, Dr. Weir announced the following schedule of dates and deadlines (pp. A-75, B-5):
(UBC Senate Decision — Page 5)
January 23, 2001, Brief statement re focus of 1st paper, for 20/100 marks
February 6, 2001, 1st paper due (max. 1500 words)
March 11, 2001, Colloquium paper due (15 min.), for 20/100 marks
March 20, 2001, Brief statement re focus of 2nd paper due
April 3, 2001, 2nd paper due (max. 3000 words), for 60/100 marks.
Dr. Weir announced the format for the colloquium as follows:
Sun. March 11th – Colloquium
Each seminar member will contribute one 15 min. paper which may take up some aspect of the final paper OR develop an aspect of the first paper OR approach another aspect of the course. Panels to be arranged. Optional session re strategies for oral presentations tba
At this point, your misgivings about the Sunday, March 11, 2001 colloquium began to emerge, and initially you tried to reopen the discussion of the arrangements on the ground that perhaps the students who promoted them had withdrawn from the course. On January 22, 2001, you e-mailed Dr. Weir stating that you wished to meet her to discuss three matters, and asking in part:
3) Is it possible to ask people again whether the colloquium we are having has to be on a Sunday. The person for whom Sunday was chosen wasn’t at the seminar last week and I am wondering if she left it all together. If so, it seemed that Saturday was certainly possible or it may be that even one day during the week is up as a possibility now. I heard you say that once we decided on a day it could not be changed, but signifying “Sunday” (a day in the chain of the days of the week) can be taken out of the chain of signs and come to signify another day….
When you did not receive a reply from Dr. Weir, you sent another e-mail to her on January 25, 2001 stating as follows:
I guess the day for our mini colloquium was left at Sunday because the student for whom it was chosen was back last week. Still, there are fewer students now in the seminar than there were when Sunday was chosen as the only possibility so it might be worth trying for a different day. I was also thinking about what one student said who participated in the same kind of a colloquium last term when it was an all day event, and she described it as a bit of a torturous marathon. So I am wondering if we can even find a contiguous afternoon/morning to have the colloquium….
In this email, you reiterated your request to revisit the arrangements modifying your point about the fluctuating enrolment and adding a workload issue. You erred in your appeal documents by saying Dr. Weir did not respond to this enquiry (p. A-7), because in fact Dr. Weir responded, rejecting your concerns as follows (p. B-26):
It was hard enough to agree on anything to begin with that I don’t want to reopen the topic! Obviously you have concerns about the daylong meeting but I suspect you’ll enjoy it once we get started.
In the class on Tuesday, January 30, 2001, smoldering resentments of last November were revived, as you again felt put on the defensive against your classmates. You felt under scathing attack from your classmates and lacking support from Dr. Weir over your attempt to attack Derrida, whose academic work was central to the course, for his “sloppy scholarship.” You and your classmates engaged in a protracted and heated argument over Derrida’s statement that the Holy Eucharist was an act of cannibalism. You faulted Derrida for an argument flawed by misquoting a passage from the Bible.
(UBC Senate Decision — Page 6)
In a post-mortem assessment of the class, Dr. Weir agreed with a student’s opinion that your behaviour was the cause of the problems, and your intransigence was unproductive and confrontational (pp. B-28 to 29). The student also complained that from that moment onwards you engaged in a campaign of silent protest against the course and its participants, stifling the atmosphere by attending class but refusing ominously to enter class discussions. The student said she had not followed the list server debate in November, but when she learned about it, she surmised your brooding silence to be the cumulative result of the two controversies in which you found yourself at odds with some classmates. On the other hand, you said at the hearing your silence was innocently based on your understanding with Dr. Weir reached through exchange of e-mails dated February 2-3, 2001 (pp. A-91 to 94), and that several other students were just as quiet as you were, without sinister implications. Dr. Weir seems to agree with the student that your silence was a special form of silent protest, for she wrote on your final paper, “I have done my best throughout the seminar to accommodate you on issues ranging from abstention from participating in the conversation of the seminar…”. Your understanding that your silence was just like that of other students does not seem to be shared.
In these same e-mails you also explicitly changed your approach from gingerly trying to reopen the discussion about the arrangements for the colloquium (as Dr. Weir told you she would not do so). You forthrightly declined to attend the colloquium, but your concern was to make other arrangements acceptable to Dr. Weir for yourself. Your first suggestion was an oral presentation on another occasion. You did not indicate to Dr. Weir why you were unable to attend the Sunday, March 11 colloquium. You achieved your primary objective, however, as you and Dr. Weir reached an understanding regarding submission of written paper instead of making a brief oral presentation (for 20 marks). On February 2, 2001, you wrote to Dr. Weir as follows (p. A-5):
2) I will not be able to do my seminar presentation at the colloquium on Sunday Mar. 11 at (student’s name omitted) home. I would be happy to discuss other possible suggestions as to when I would do my presentation. If I present to the seminar, I would appreciate the reciprocal privilege of having a paper based version of their presentations to read as well.
Dr. Weir replied on February 3, 2001 in the early morning hours as follows (pp. B-27, A-5):
Re colloquium: the seminar group as a whole agreed on the colloquium and achieved consensus re time and place. I believe you were present for those discussions and did not object in class to the decision. We took two weeks to make this decision and, as you know, I invited email opinions from everyone in the group. The decision was, I believe, made in a fair way, involving the whole group and emerging out of suggestions initially presented by group members. I am sorry that you will not be able to attend and will miss the learning experience which such an event affords both in terms of learning how to organize and present at a colloquium and in terms of receiving feedback from the other participants. I suggest we follow the same procedure in this instance as would normally be followed were a participant ill and unable to attend. In that case, I would expect the colloquium paper to be submitted as a conventional written paper would be and I would assess it in the usual way.
(UBC Senate Decision — Page 7)
Disputing aspects of Dr. Weir’s reply, you responded on February 3, 2001 around noon (p. A-5):
I would like to speak to you about the date and place of the colloquium. Briefly though, the choice of Sunday, and the location at (student’s name) was proposed and decided in about 10-15 minutes. I was not sure at that time that I was even going to remain in the seminar and so I was reluctant to object. There are other issues surrounding this that I would like to speak to you about if only to be clear about why I have chosen not to participate in this particular colloquium.
In this e-mail you list various concerns for your inability to attend the colloquium: it was scheduled on Sunday, the location at the named student’s home, and your explanation for not speaking up earlier. You coyly referred to “other issues” for boycotting the colloquium, which you preferred to discuss in person, and not to record in writing. The phrase, “the choice of Sunday,” could mean practically anything to someone in Dr. Weir’s position. One might surmise you worked or had family responsibilities on weekends that conflicted with attendance. Even assuming that Dr. Weir had active knowledge of your Christian beliefs from your prior acquaintance in the undergraduate course when she read your e-mail, she could not reasonably be expected to draw the conclusion that you were invoking Sunday observance as your objection. In ordinary common parlance, Sunday is not understood to be observed as a “holy day.” For example the Random House Dictionary of the English Language defines a “holy day” as follows (p. 678):
a consecrated day or religious festival, esp. one other than Sunday.
References to “Sunday” are not self-explanatory, and do not imply a holy day. Similarly, Policy #65, on which you rely, does not support your argument, with all due respect. At the bottom of the Policy it is stated:
Detailed Procedure
The Registrar’s Office will distribute a multi-faith calendar to each administrative head of unit annually.
In reference to this procedure, the Registrar’s Office promulgates on its website a list of faiths and their holy days, under the title, Religious Holidays, ubc.ca.
The website lists statutory holidays. The statutory holidays with religious connotations are Good Friday, Easter Monday, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. Sunday is not a statutory holiday. The website also lists faiths and their principal religious holidays, some of which have fixed dates and others of which vary according to the lunar calendar. The site cautions that its list “may not be all inclusive.” Under the heading, Christian, the following days are listed: Feast of the Immaculate Conception (Roman Catholic), Christmas, Christmas (Orthodox), Good Friday, Easter, Good Friday (Orthodox) and Easter/Paschal (Orthodox). As “Sunday” is not listed as a principal religious holiday in Policy #65, nor understood to be a “holy day” according to the dictionary, one must be quite explicit in invoking a religious objection to a class scheduled on a Sunday, and cannot make unwarranted assumptions about what others ought to infer from somewhat vague allusions.
(UBC Senate Decision — Page 8)
For the Senate Committee, the question remains: Were you sufficiently explicit to raise Sunday observance as a ground of objection to the scheduling of the colloquium?
On February 8, 2001, you and Dr. Weir met for an hour at her office. At p. A-7, you described the meeting very briefly as follows:
Dr. Weir & I meet and I explain religious conflict for colloquium day including email sent by student at whose home the colloquium would be held.
It would appear that you were basing your objection to the colloquium on the falling out over the contentious debate of the previous November (“religious conflict for colloquium day including email sent by student at whose home colloquium would be held.”) This would not be sufficient to invoke Policy #65 or religious freedom in the mind of a reasonable person in the position of Dr. Weir.
Dr. Weir’s recollection of the meeting indicates that she sought to mollify your interpersonal concerns, and diffuse tensions you felt towards other participants in the course, but to remain steadfast in refusing to change the arrangements at this late date (in her view). The italicized portion of her account is at variance with your testimony at the hearing, as you testified you did not disavow Sunday observance as a factor in your objections to the colloquium. On the other hand, you did not explicitly invoke Sunday observance either. At p. B-15, Dr. Weir states:
On Feb. 8th Ms Maughan came to see me, having asked in an email to discuss with me another issue related to the colloquium. During the course of a lengthy discussion in my office, I tried to make common cause with Ms Maughan by inquiring about her religious denomination, mentioning my own Catholic upbringing and academic concerns with Protestant hermeneutics and Scholastic theology. Ms Maughan told me about her own Anglican faith and her parents’ evangelical views and shared a little of her family history with me, including the fact that she had grown up next to a reserve and was familiar with native issues because of that. Mentioning my own civil libertarian stance and my work in defence of individual rights and freedoms, I inquired whether her concern with the colloquium was grounded in religious observance. Ms Maughan told me that the issue was not Sunday observance as she often worked on Sunday. Ms Maughan makes very much the same statement in her Senate file on p. 133: “I do not regularly attend church on Sunday right now and certainly do school work on Sundays.” To me the issue was, rather, her disagreement with…the host of the colloquium. Ms Maughan told me she refused to cross (his) threshold…I replied that I could not be responsible for the interpersonal difficulties of my students outside the seminar and that I expected appropriate conduct within the seminar as befitting adults gathered to discuss intellectual issues….
Even assuming your recollection is to be preferred over that of Dr. Weir, you did not explicitly raise Sunday observance at any stage up to this point in the chronology of events.
Instead of submitting your writing in substitution for the oral presentation, you sent it as an e-mail attachment to Dr. Weir on March 21, 2001. Your covering e-mail to Dr. Weir stated in part as follows (p. A-106):
Attach: 553paper.doc
Subject: 553 Paper and Intention
As discussed. Thanks again for speaking with me yesterday particularly on such short notice and after such a late afternoon seminar.
Cynthia
(UBC Senate Decision — Page 9)
Dr. Weir read the e-mail but failed to open the attachment until mid-April, by which time you had submitted your final paper and she had marked it. For reasons that follow, the Senate Committee was unimpressed by Dr. Weir’s explanation for omitting to open the attachment (p. B-16):
In spite of my request for a hard copy of Ms Maughan’s presentation to be put in my box soon after the colloquium, that hard copy did not arrive and I did not peruse the matter further nor did I hear anything about the paper from Ms Maughan. Since the colloquium paper was designed as a kind of prospectus or trial run of the argument to be developed in the final paper and since I did not hear anything from Ms Maughan about the topic of either assignment, I assumed she had things under control. I expect my graduate students to take responsibility for their own work and I do not pursue them with questions unless they request help.
When Ms Maughan did next communicate with me, she sent me an e-mail that did not flag the contents of the attachments as the colloquium paper and therefore I assumed that she was endeavouring to get me to read a draft of her final paper as the deadline was imminent. I have a firm policy of not reading email drafts of papers though I will look over them if the student comes with the paper during office hours or makes an appointment. As I was overwhelmed with work during the penultimate week of term, I did not open the attachment but kept it for reference when I had time to look at it. As it happened this did not occur until mid-April when I was ‘housecleaning’ my course e-mail file and preparing final grades for English 553. I then included my assessment of the presentation paper in my calculation of Ms Maughan’s final grade.
Dr. Weir did not read your attachment until after she had received and marked your final paper. When Dr. Weir read your attachment, she commented on it, “It’s unfortunate that you didn’t have the benefit of colloquium discussion/response to this proposal.” This comment served to reopen old wounds regarding your intransigence, and led you to conclude that you were being punished for Sunday observance.
Dr. Weir marked your final paper as B-, and her qualitative assessment in the appeal documents was acerbic: “I believe Ms Maughan’s paper got what it deserved…, a B- which was generous under the circumstances” (p. B-19).
In the final paper itself, you wrote:
The 553 seminar…seems to be either…or (2) a seminar (sic) is purely the supply of a bill of goods as listed in the syllabus…and this paper must risk appearing to have a lack of respect….
Dr. Weir did not overlook your comments, or sidestep an opportunity for a full rebuttal in a similar vein. She wrote “that this paper is, unfortunately, yet another manifestation of your agenda of resistance in this course…”. In hindsight, Dr. Weir asked rhetorically why you stayed in the seminar when “Derrida’s angered you so much,” harking back to the contentious discussion of the Eucharist. She also felt she had gone out of her way by catering to your request for abstention from participating in the seminar, and by acquiescing in an understanding with you permitting you to remain silent (quoted previously).
(UBC Senate Decision — Page 14)
Having failed to open your e-mail attachment yet, Dr. Weir erroneously wrote you had not submitted a “substitute paper” for the colloquium, as previously agreed.
You sought assistance from the Equity Office, and you appealed your mark to the departmental equity Committee, to the Head, and to the Faculty of Graduate Studies; but your appeal was dismissed at each stage. Finally, you appealed to the Senate Committee relying on Policy #65. Since your appeal mainly concerned the wording of Policy #65, the Senate Committee would conclude its analysis by quoting the relevant parts:
Policy #65 states in part as follows:
Recognizing the religious diversity of the UBC community, UBC permits students who are scheduled to attend classes or write examinations on holy days of their religions to notify their instructors in advance of the holy day of their wish to observe it by absenting themselves from class or examination… Students are required to give two weeks’ notice of their intention to absent themselves under the terms of this policy. They shall notify the instructor of each course…
In January, Dr. Weir had determined the date for the colloquium in consultation with the class. A student in the class had offered his residence as the venue for the colloquium, and the other students and Dr. Weir had accepted it. You balked at the offer, and tried to turn the situation around using various stratagems, but in the view of the majority of the Senate Committee you did not notify the instructor of the holy day as required under Policy #65. Since Sunday is not usually a Christian holy day, anyone who wishes to seek accommodation of their desire for Sunday observance must make the request clearly. Had the instructor been notified, a duty to accommodate your request would have arisen. In the absence of direct notification an instructor is not under any such obligation. On this basis the majority of the Senate Committee decided to dismiss your appeal.
The majority felt you had failed to prove you had made a request to be excused from the colloquium on the grounds of wishing to observe the Sabbath. In the circumstances of your communications with Dr. Weir, she had a reasonable basis for thinking and thought you were concerned solely about feeling awkward in being required to attend a class in the dwelling of another student with whom you had a falling out over religious beliefs. Dr. Weir reasonably felt your objections were purely social or interpersonal rather than conscientious.
(UBC Senate Decision — Page 10)
CRITICAL UNANIMOUS FINDING OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE:
The Senate Committee also unanimously agreed, however, that Dr. Weir had been neglectful of her teaching duties in failing to open the e-mail attachment that you sent to her. By neglecting to open your attachment until after the deadline for submitting final papers had passed, Dr. Weir failed to give you timely feedback. Dr. Weir said she did not see the attachment and faulted your covering message for not explicitly drawing her attention to it, and she faulted you for failing to follow up with requests for a reply. Nevertheless, attachments are usually highly visible on recipients’ computer screens, and are often sent without covering messages at all. As previously described, your attachment was flagged in bold print. You and Dr. Weir exchanged responsive if curt e-mails prior to and after you sent the attachment. During this time you and Dr. Weir had mutually strained relations, however, and exchanged minimal communications with each other. When each side manifests the desire to have as little as possible to do with the other, they share the increasing risks of miscommunication and misunderstanding.
The Senate Committee also unanimously concluded that the Department of English, in responding to your appeal, mounted an irrelevant and unseemly attack upon your character for mental and emotional stability and for religious tolerance. You had ample grounds for your objections at the hearing to the admissibility of these passages in various documents. The Senate Committee felt that such an attack on your character embarrassed the university, and descended well beneath the current standards of Charter values. The Senate Committee observes that this departmental attack was inexcusable even though it arose in the context of an unusually acrimonious appeal in which the appeal documents showed mutual baiting between yourself and the instructor. The exchanging of insults abated during the oral hearing. Prior to the hearing, however, each of you cast aspersions on the other, giving pretty much as good as you got. You offered derogatory comments about the quality of the course (e.g., disparaging the course as a “bill of goods”), and Dr. Weir mocked your standard of scholarship, negativism and prejudices towards her and the course (e.g., vilifying your “attitude of resistance”). In the Senate Committee’s view this tit for tat fell short of Dr. Weir’s avowed standard of decorum: “appropriate conduct…befitting adults gathered to discuss intellectual issues.”
The dissenting minority of the Senate Committee felt that Dr. Weir should not have held a university course function off the campus in a private residence in which you as her student would be cast in the role of the “unwelcome guest.” You had expressed plenty of advance notice to Dr. Weir that you were discomforted and unwilling to attend the function because of a personal antipathy towards the host (and which you reasonably thought was reciprocated by the other student). Although Dr. Weir was unaware of all the details of your disagreement with the other student, she was aware of your antipathy towards him. Instead of side-stepping the controversy by making other arrangements for the colloquium, Dr. Weir brought the fray into the seminar by dismissing your concerns about attending a course function as a juvenile hang-up of your own making. This is a minority view within the Senate Committee, however.
The minority opinion of the Senate Committee concluded that an instructor who was made aware of a pre-existing disagreement or antipathy between two students should not exacerbate the situation by trivializing it, or by paving the way towards excluding either of them from official events. In the dissenting view, Dr. Weir presented you with a “Hobson’s choice” of attending an academic event in the private residence of the other combatant, or of forgoing the event entirely (albeit with alternative arrangements for you). By so doing Dr. Weir ceased to occupy a position of neutrality to students’ interpersonal relations, and “sent a message” of “siding” with the indispensable host against you, as the marginalized, disposable guest. Dr. Weir was inclined to the view that you had only yourself to blame for having painted yourself into a corner. She thought you could extract yourself from an impasse of your own making. The Senate Committee’s dissenting view, however, is that when an instructor becomes aware of a
(UBC Senate Decision — Page 16)
student’s unwillingness to be hosted by a student, she or he should maintain an appearance of neutrality and equal courtesy to all students by rescheduling the event to a “neutral” venue. A classroom or lounge on the campus would provide a setting in which members of the class would feel on an equal footing, thereby minimizing any loss of face for either student. Dr. Weir adamantly refused your repeated requests to re-open the scheduling of the colloquium, viewing them as disruptive and contrary to the will of the majority, if not attempted sabotage on your part, thereby appearing to align herself against you.
Other issues were raised by your appeal, and the chronology of events could be discussed at greater length, but the Senate Committee hopes this lengthy letter explains its reasons for dismissing your appeal on the issue that you raised as a test case.
Yours sincerely,
(Signed: Anthony F. Sheppard)
Anthony F. Sheppard
Chair, Senate Committee on Appeals on Academic Standing
cc: Dr. Ann Rose, Associate Dean, Faculty of Graduate Studies
Members of the Senate Committee