"When you walk...

...through a storm, hold your head up high, and don't be afraid of the dark...."

Well, one of the things I was concerned about sort of came to pass. Two people with whom I work have apparently erupted into an e-mail fight. Over a topic that really mainly concerns the two of them. And they cc'd everyone in the department.

I read the first e-mail, and part of the response to it (the response was very long) and the last e-mail, where they apparently agreed to a detente.

But this is one of the things as an (I guess) comparatively junior faculty member (though with 10 years experience, I'm really not junior any more), I don't know how to respond to.

My gut feeling is to delete the e-mails unread. For one thing, I think it shows a lack of tact (to say the least) to cc the other people in the situation - they have no dog in the hunt, so to speak. One of the people in question did raise the concerns with me and my response was essentially, "This does not affect me; I think you need to take it up with the person in question and not talk to me about it."

I also think of someone who left here some years ago and burned his bridges before doing so by saying things to people. He told me I had "anger issues." I felt bad about that for days and questioned my view of myself - yes, I knew I had a temper, but I worked hard to control it in situations where other people were around. (I had gotten mildly irritated at this person once because they failed to file some paperwork that affected both of us). But I didn't e-mail everyone else complaining about the paperwork mess-up.

I don't know. I don't understand people. I'll never understand people.

I don't know if I'm duty bound to slog through all the e-mails or not, in case some future problem comes up. Or if I just treat them as two people who were tired and angry and may have said things they later on realized they didn't want to say. I don't know if I will look unprofessional by saying, "Oh, I didn't read them" or if I will later be called on in a meeting to discuss the situation.

I also have a draft e-mail to my chair requesting that a request be sent forth that in the future, if someone has a problem with another individual that they PLEASE not hash it out by cc'ing everyone else, but rather try to deal with it individually and only involve others if there is no ability for resolution.

The thing is - there were charges of unprofessional conduct levied, and to be frank, I think it's unprofessional to make all of us unwilling spectators to the situation.

I don't know. I don't like wondering if my department is starting to fall apart at the seams, to think "Oh man, I may need to seek employment elsewhere" - with all the pain of uprooting and going through a tenure process again and all of that.

I'm trying to tell myself that this is not the first domino in a chain of events pushing me to do something but maybe it is. My brother and sister-in-law are contemplating a move away from Illinois. Apparently she's been offered a good position at a DEA office near DC, and my brother (as a campus minister) has a more or less portable job...so they're thinking about it. Which means my parents wouldn't have any close-by kids any more, and while that's not currently an issue, it could become one in the next years, seeing as my parents are both in their 70s. And as I'm the unmarried kid, as I'm the one with fewer other considerations (no spouse, no in-laws), it might be up to me to make the sacrifice of moving. And I don't know, I tend to believe things happen for a reason, and once before something that seemed Very Bad at the time pushed me into a better situation.

But, dear God (and I am not being flip here), I don't want to move. I don't want to seek a new position and all that entails.

I don't know. I don't like conflict. I'm a great conflict avoider. And so it perplexes me when people around me have large disagreements and blow-ups. I tend to be excessively tactful in how I react to people, to the point where I sometimes don't get my way (and I'm OK with that).

So I don't know. Do I read the e-mails, putting myself in a worse mood (my good mood was already disrupted by reading the first e-mail and part of the second), do I ignore them but leave them in my inbox, to be faced with them every time I check my mail, or do I just delete them unread and tell people - if they ask me - that I don't have the time and energy to deal with fights that I have no part in?

Once again, I find myself thinking of that job in Alaska measuring caribou basal temperatures, and how that may have still involved sphincters (to use a more polite word this time), but at least it was sphincters that could not talk. (But then again: I don't know how to field-dress a moose, and I think I'd be distinctly discomfited by having to use a privy, which many of those backcountry areas have, because plumbing is a great difficulty with permafrost)

I don't know. I'm just glad I can run away the end of this week and be away from this petri dish for a while.