Students Don't Dispute "Not Disputatious" Label

Did Prof. Green see red when she got her copy of the email I'd sent to 18 students? No one can know. But in class she had this little announcement to make:

Ummm ... some housekeeping issues .... Some of you may have received an email message from one of the students in this class. I am not going to take up class time by responding to it here; but if you have any questions or concerns, you can discuss them with me afterwards.

Did any of the students go to her with concerns -- perhaps to be assured that they are not overly respectful of authority?

And did she tell them that I'm evil? Or just sick?

Alas, I cannot know that either. Actually, I went to class with a modicum of anticipation about the students' reaction to my email. But there was no reaction -- which, when you think about it, is pretty consistent with what the email said. No one discussed it. No one questioned it. During the 10-minute mid-class break, I joined some students who went outside to hang around. One fellow asked the others, "What was the email she was talking about?" I spoke up and said I'd sent it, and briefly described what it was about. "Oh," he said, "I figured it was something else." That's all he had to say. One girl opined: "it was very long." There was no further comment of any kind. Nor did anyone ever reply via email.

There was one manifestation of student sentiment later on that might be worth mentioning, though I don't even know whether it was in response to the email. As it happened, that was the day course evaluations were to be completed by the students, and the prof distributed the forms after class. Students were to fill them out and leave when they were done. I ended up walking out at the same time as another student, a girl with a crew cut and several steel hoops in her ears. Not exactly my style, but hey -- live and let live. I didn't know her at all and had never spoken to her before. As we headed for the building exit, I casually asked her, with a friendly grin, whether she'd been positive in her evaluation.

Her face was set in a stony grimace, and she kept her eyes averted as she curtly answered: "No."

"I guess you don't want to talk about it," I said.

"You're not supposed to talk about it, it's confidential," she said angrily, quickening her pace. She seemed to despise me. We were both going to the library. We walked for about 60 seconds in blistering silence, a few feet apart, before we parted forever.