Instructor Faces Backlash After She Belittles Student on Class Forum

U. of California at San Diego

Last week Rundong Zhong, a third-year student in mathematics and computer science at the University of California at San Diego, posted on the online forum for his “Fluency in Information Technology” course. He asked if he could post “funny stuff” to a university server as part of a project for another class.

The course’s instructor, Susan Marx, a lecturer, wrote in response that a cat photo Zhong had uploaded to his web page — as part of an assignment to create a professional web page — was inappropriate. She also wrote that she would “reprimand” the student tutor who had approved the idea. Marx’s assignment had asked students to choose “a picture that represents your planned UCSD academics.”

But the second part of Marx’s post on the class forum, in which she shared details of Zhong’s academic status at the university, has prompted students to rally around him.

In the forum post, which was visible to all students in the course, Marx urged Zhong to reconsider his actions, writing that he was on academic probation and had failed classes in his computer-science major.

“UCSD is of the highest in international academic standings and NOT the same as your Irvine Valley College,” Marx wrote, referring to the community college from which Zhong had transferred.

“She was trying to look through my academic career and see if there is anything she can use against me, and she chose ‘transfer student,’” Zhong wrote in an email to The Chronicle. “In my opinion, she thinks, as a transfer student, I am not as good as other students.”

Dean M. Tullsen, chair of the department of computer science and engineering, said on Tuesday that the university was investigating the incident.

“UCSD CSE department believes very strongly in treating all students with respect, and greatly values the privacy of each student,” Tullsen wrote in an email to The Chronicle. “Any actions that violate those principles will be taken very seriously.”

For her part, Marx wrote in an email to The Chronicle that “the public posting of this information was inadvertent, and I am deeply sorry.” The email echoed what she had told the campus newspaper.

A Matter of Privacy

A screen shot of the exchange circulated on Twitter and Reddit, where other students expressed support for Zhong. Many encouraged him to contact the university’s registrar, asserting that Marx’s post was a violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or Ferpa, the federal law that governs access to educational records. Others shared links to the university’s online bias-reporting form.

Jared Suasin, a third-year cognitive-science major with a minor in computer science, was disappointed by Marx’s actions.

“I just thought it was handled very unprofessionally,” Suasin said. “To humiliate the student like that wasn’t right.”

Suasin said Marx’s post had violated the trust between students and professors.

“It’s like you go to the doctor, and they tell everyone about your medical condition,” he said. “There’s a sense of confidentiality that you have with a professor if they have access to that information. She completely disregarded that.”

In protest, another student, Alex Garcia, a third-year computer-engineering major, created a GitHub tool that papers student websites with cat photos.

“I thought it would be kind of funny to make a tool so that way other people can post this infamous cat picture on their own section of the website, just to show that this server isn’t for professionalism, it isn’t for academic stuff,” Garcia said. “This is your space; you can talk about whatever you want, you can post whatever you want, including cat photos.”

Garcia said he hoped the incident would spark conversation and action in the department. He suggested safeguards that would prevent such an incident from happening again.

Zhong said he had not heard from Marx since Sunday, when she sent him an email warning that unless he changed the photo on his web page, he would receive no credit for the assignment. He has now changed the photo.