Before beginning, I'd like to take a moment to remind everyone that, as this is the last lecture of the semester, I'll be ending a bit early to allow time for you to fill out and turn in teacher evaluation forms.
In case this is your first semester at this university, I should make it clear that these evaluations are completely anonymous. The only way these could be traced back to their individual authors is if one were to review your past assignments and closely scrutinize the sad particulars of your handwriting and vexing grammatical errors.
And, of course, these evaluations won't be released to me until long after your final grades have been submitted, so you needn't worry about retribution on an individual or group basis. Is this a good thing?"" one could ask, and believe me, I have. It's the kind of thoughtful inquiry I'll be looking for when grading your final exams in the coming weeks. Unfortunately, the Dean's office has been less open to having a discussion about changing these and other antiquated and unnecessary rules, and so I leave the matter before your own ethical judgment.
With that boilerplate out of the way, I would like to get back to the more edifying part of my duties; however, recent events prompt me to emphasize one last point of classroom procedure. These evaluations are meant to assess the faculty with regard to his or her abilities as an educator.
Particularly where a serious matter like tenure may be at stake, you all have a moral obligation to uphold the integrity of this process and focus strictly on what has happened in this lecture hall during class time, rather than on what campus rumors or television exposes allege may have occurred here after hours.
Just as the university's code of conduct obliges me to assign you a grade based on your academic merits and not the recorded instances of drug use or sexual impropriety on public display on many of your social networking profiles; so, too, are you obligated to overlook irrelevant incidents, such as if a series of photos meant to be sent from one consenting adult to another was inadvertently submitted to the class listserv.
The fact that these private photos were intended for a student in this class hardly seems germane to a discussion of faculty misconduct, given that their inclusion in a class-wide e-mail on the subject of academic discipline was nothing more than a small, admittedly Freudian oversight. If you insist on breaching these ethical boundaries, I see no reason why the intimate details of a certain student's physician's notes shouldn't find their way onto next semester's required reading list for this course. I assure you that this isn't as big a university as you might wish to think.
In the interest of maintaining the highest possible degree of academic integrity, I would also ask that you withhold both judgment and information about anything that may have occurred in this lecture hall between 1 and 3 a.m. during the month of March, including but not limited to the alleged incidents described in Fox News' special report, ""XXXtra Credit.""
I apologize for my extended absence from class during the past month, but my presence was required in attending to some personal matters that I have been advised against discussing at the present time. If we had covered our unit on professional ethics as originally planned, I would have mentioned the importance of leaving school attorneys to work in peace, and that under no circumstances should one interrupt an ongoing investigation by confessing to have engaged in inappropriate relations with university faculty.
Glancing at the clock, I notice that we've nearly used up the time allotted for today's lecture, but as your TAs pass out the evaluations and I leave you to prepare for your final exam, I'd like to remind you all of the importance of faculty letters of recommendation for securing future internships and scholarship opportunities.
Cough.
Thank you.
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