please expound. i am in a similar predicament and feel like a lone voice in the wild when trying to express this to my peers. i can't tell if they don't see what i do or if they are on board with it.
HR is completely non responsive and on the off chance you get in contact with them you get one of three answers:
- you're dumb because you didn't know about this other form/rule/policy
- you actually need to talk to X (typically the person who sent me to them)
- the policy from last time changed, or are claimed to have changed
OT: could I ask you some questions about another thread (semiconductor fabs), privately? My twitter contact info is in my profile.
Somewhere in there is a happy balance between 'no HR' and an 'HR run organization'. I haven't experienced it, but I would choose big companies over academia in a heart beat
I’m trying to interpret your comment charitably, so I hope I’m not misinterpreting.
If I spend 2-4 hours a week with 120 students it is really a lot to ask faculty (who are not trained) or dorm RAs (who are minimally trained) to be responsible for the enormous mental health challenges facing this generation.
It is not reasonable, safe, or even possible.
I care about an aircraft being flown safely. But for the love of God, don't put me in the cockpit and make me responsible for flying the plane safely.
Ditto for mental health of undergrads when I'm lecturing. I'm there to teach them how to implement a red-black tree. Do I care about their mental health? Of course. Do I feel any responsibility for it? Hell no.
Sometimes caring about something means NOT taking responsibility for that thing.
The reality is complicated:
- there are things I do that affect students' mental health
- there are things my university does that affect students mental health
- there are things that society does that affect my students mental health
- there are things my students do that affect their mental health
What I can influence is basically the first category - that is where my responsibility is. What I am being asked to deal with is accommodating ALL of the categories. I am pro-better mental health, I have my own mental health issues, and worry about our students mental health. I can (to an extent) accommodate the other categories - but it creates a load on me and really it just pushes the issue further along. However asking me to accommodate EVERYTHING is a negative feedback loop. We need to FIX these things not accommodate them. Instead, what we get told to do is 'accommodate' by 'being flexible'. Well guess what, that doesn't involve anyone taking responsibility, its just kicking the can down the road. Administration sends emails to faculty about flexibility but can't get our mental health services off of a six month wait list. Most faculty aren't trained to teach - even fewer are trained for this. Frankly, you don't want us to play mental health professional.
I feel responsible for the way my classes interact with students' mental health. For my own mental health I wish I could not be responsible for the impact my (less generous) peers have on them. Where it starts to affect my mental health is that I feel responsible for my universities policies and the way students treat each other and the way society treats mental health. There are so many stressors that are so far beyond both my responsibility and control. I wish I could convince this country to maybe address mental health as an illness, work to meet people's basic needs, make college free or low cost - that would do far more for mental health than I can. At some point, my own mental health requires me to put some emotional distance between me and the students stressed about med school so I can focus on trying to link the students who are homeless to housing resources.
Story for context: in fall of 2020, I had a student BEG me to bump their grade up to an incomplete because they had miscalculated their grade. I sent them five emails of increasing frankness telling them 'you earned an A and our school doesn't do +/-' including pointing out their miscalculation. They literally came to my office in tears. I told them, again, no seriously YOU GOT EARNED AN A. they filed a grade complaint.
Charitability appreciated, I should have phrased more carefully. I'm one of the people who has been banging the drum on this for years and it's frustrating to see it now used as a justification for all sorts of stupid crap and larger asks of faculty that are not reasonable. When I see 'mental health' used as a reason to push people back to the classroom I fume - the mental health issues were there before and no one really cared, I don't believe you actually care now.
COVID hasn't been good to anyone but faculty are in a particularly difficult situation. Increasingly, they are made to feel responsible for their students' mental health and well being alongside increasing expectations around teaching, inevitably increasing expectations around research, ever more administrative nonsense, and ever more interference and being messed about with. Add in just he absolute sheer NOISE of doing anything - including trying to publish and it's just overwhelming.
Honestly, if I leave academia - it will be HR that finally does it. I work at a university where the sheer incompetence of HR has effectively wrenched complete control away from anyone else.