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Education

Harvard Snoops on Staff Via Email Over Cheating Scandal

Mar. 10, 2013 7:00pm Mytheos Holt

Last fall, Harvard University summarily suspended somewhere between 60 and 70 students after investigating a rash of cheating in an introductory government course. Now, it appears that it wasn’t just the students reading over each others’ shoulders.

Harvard University Administration Searches Deans Emails Over Cheating Scandal Leak

Harvard University (File Photo)

The Harvard administration apparently was concerned about potential leaks to the press, after an email specifying confidential administrative procedure was leaked to the press, apparently because one professor forwarded it to a particularly exposure-hungry student. As a result, the administration decided to skip the process of asking for confession, and simply searched the emails of its 16 resident deans (administration officials tasked with handling the cheating scandal, who also occasionally teach), trying to find the leak in an outbox. The problem? That particular approach may not have been allowed under the deans’ contract of employment. The Boston Globe reports:

The other 15 deans were left unaware their email accounts had been searched by administrators until the Globe approached Harvard with questions about the incident on Thursday, having learned of it from multiple Harvard officials who described it in detail. Those officials asked for anonymity out of fear of reprisal.

Harvard administrators said they would inform the remaining deans today — almost six months after the search.

The deans have two Harvard email accounts – one primarily intended for administrative duties, and another for personal matters. Only the first category of accounts was searched; information technology staffers were instructed to look only for a specific forwarded message heading and to not read the content of messages.

News of the incident could nonetheless anger Harvard faculty members, whose privacy in electronic records is protected under a Faculty of Arts and Sciences policy.

Resident deans are not professors, but they teach. At issue is how much privacy they should expect.

This decision by the Harvard administration has touched off protests from the officials in question, even as the university tries to calm the storm. The Associated Press reported:

Harvard spokesman Jeff Neal did not specifically address the allegations but denied any routine monitoring of emails.

“Any assertion that Harvard routinely monitors emails — for any reason — is patently false,” he said in an email.

Sharon Howell, Harvard’s senior resident dean, criticized Harvard administrators and said they owed the deans an apology for failing to notify the email account holders until after gaining access to the emails.

“They don’t seem to think they’ve done anything wrong,” she told the Globe.

There is a silver lining for Harvard, albeit a meager one: At least one dean was apparently identified who had sent the email in question, though the university did not take any disciplinary action against him.

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Comments (13)

Thehulk
Posted on March 11, 2013 at 11:59am
Harvard should pay their FAIR SHARE…

In fiscal year 2011, Harvard University was more than $12 billion richer than any other college in the country.

The top-ranked Harvard financial endowment was $32,012,729,000 in the 2011 fiscal year, the school reported to U.S. News in a 2012 survey.

That figure was well above the fiscal-year average: Of the 1,189 ranked colleges that reported endowment figures to U.S. News, the average endowment was roughly $313,182,000.

This money should be shared with the rest of the universities, LETS GET CONSERVATIVES ON BOARD and weaken this UNFAIR practice.

PLUS how many grads from Harvard are unemployed they should be given retraining or their money back. It’s only FAIR.

The GOP should help students cost by going after these UNFAIR ENDOWMENTS!!!!!

These socialist schools should live by socialist rules…

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Wyerd_001
Posted on March 11, 2013 at 8:10am
It wasn’t a private email, it was an administrative email account, for the use of school administration. There is no privacy on that account, and like the title says, the private accounts supplied were left alone.

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PlanetReality
Posted on March 11, 2013 at 6:52am
Isnt this where most of our politicians went to college!???? !! HOW IRONIC!!!!!???
And a costly education at that!!!

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DZ-015
Posted on March 10, 2013 at 9:49pm
Cheating is rampant in government, so what’s wrong with cheating in a government class? The hands on approach to learning would actually dictate such wrongdoing in order to pass the course with the highest (dis)honors.

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- The_Jerk
  Posted on March 11, 2013 at 12:57am
  The poison Ivy League.
  
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Jake Dog2
Posted on March 10, 2013 at 9:45pm
16 resident deans??? Add to that all the administrators ?? No wonder colleges are so damn costly.

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geeman
Posted on March 10, 2013 at 8:04pm
Why would students in this class have to cheat,just say republican bad, democrat good, A+! Now lets talk about climate change.

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- WTFurnuts
  Posted on March 10, 2013 at 8:30pm
  Harvard sucked in the 70′s and 80′s and now, well, they still suck.
  
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smokeysmoke
Posted on March 10, 2013 at 7:41pm
WHY IS THE POST OFFICE ADVERTISING THAT CONGRESS IS NOT GIVING THEM ALL THE MONEY THEY NEED….. IS ADVERTISING FOR MORE MONEY, REALLY THAT BENIFICIAL
h

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- Anonymous T. Irrelevant
  Posted on March 10, 2013 at 8:59pm
  Especially all the money wasted creating the commercial and buying advertising time.
  
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GBTVFan_Non_American_Overseas
Posted on March 10, 2013 at 7:34pm
“…a rash of cheating in an introductory government course..”

So these were advanced students from the beginning….

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wilbstal
Posted on March 10, 2013 at 7:22pm
cheaters all of them get a better story

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Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
Posted on March 10, 2013 at 7:09pm
Typical liberals, do as I say, not as I snoop.

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