You Can be The Ethicist

I guess I would say that if the evidence is backed up by other statements (comments or between the lines inferences from personal references) then there is no problem with putting a hefty weight on those comments or inferences. The only issue I can see is if the online behaviour is the only evidence of bad character. In that case, I’d think you have to be careful as a department (coincidence and mistaken identity could be a problem).

Easy to say sitting at home without having to actually make the decision.

Yes. No. This is supposed to be _difficult_?

If someone posts under an alias, their statements should in some way be attributed to that alias. They’re responsible for anything they say, but the personality of the alias isn’t necessarily the same as the personality of the author. For instance, a despicable or in World of Warcraft might be a great graduate student and person.

These forums are a place to vent and sometimes act silly or irresponsible, I’m not sure they always serve as a good way to judge someones character in real life. Then again, would you be friends with someone who talked bad about you on a forum, even pseudonymously.

Some self-reflection might be in order. I can’t say for university level environments, but my experience with educators at other levels indicates that there there is a good deal of ‘unprofessional’ behavior (gossip about students) in protected, but not anonymous environments. Some of it would seem downright nasty and reflect poorly on the character of the speakers, whom often were regarded (rightly so, in my estimation) as professional and competent in their post. Because they believed they could be a reasonable professional and still hold personal opinions. I guess students can’t be held to this standard?

Is there a correlation between an forum thought to anonymous and a faculty cocktail party?

Understanding you might not be providing more detail to protect this person’s identity, nonetheless what you consider to be ‘utterly unpleasant’ might just look a lot like unvarnished student opinion.

Perhaps you should amend your application materials to indicate candidates should strive to be utterly pleasant.

That, and you can ask to read student diaries and journals as a condition of admission.

It’s not wrong if it doesn’t contradict the official policy.

It may be a clue, but one that amounts to hearsay and so is not by itself actionable. Part of the premise has to be that this a student who would otherwise be offered admission. Given that, a call to one of the references or interview, not inquisition, with the student might be appropriate.

It’s probably worth noting that for an academic department “unpleasant” isn’t necessarily a disqualifying attribute. It seems like demonstrated academic potential (is that an oxymoron) should weigh most heavily.

Questions of honesty are serious, but serious enough that they should be judged on direct evidence rather than the bluster and bloviation that is not uncommon on line.

The question of public vs private interesting in and of it self. Isn’t the point selection of the candidates most likely to succeed? Why would issues of honest evaluation be different?

Perhaps the situation would be clearer in a more classic contextual equivalence. Would a person caught red handed scribbling similar statements on the wall of your institution in permanent marker suffer a similar fate? Consider the website one of the walls of your institution, and the anonymous postings made by the student are the unattributed scribblings found one morning on that wall. Had someone stumbled upon the midnight writer, wouldn’t they have had an obligation to the institution to report the incident if they indeed had certain knowledge of the identity of the culprit?

Bad on-line behavior is sometimes a simple expression of stress or fear; we are different people in different social contexts, sometimes very different. Most of us hide portions of ourselves and most of us act like jerks sometimes. I have a friend who I call “my favorite right-wing crazy” and with whom I do not discuss politics. There’s a well-known professional author who is a very decent person with colleages and safe friends and an absolute jerk in other contexts.

The best thing you can do, I think, is to give unusual weight and attention to the person’s academic references, who know the most about that person as a student. One thing you want to look closely for is signs of how the person conducts themselves in intimacy, and when there are people under their authority. Someone who is OK with friends, colleagues, and subordinates, and sometimes a jerk on-line, is probably OK. Someone who abuses friends, colleagues, or subordinates when they can is trouble, and best evaluated very carefully.

I hope this is a hypothetical problem.

Research relies hugely on trust. That’s certainly true in the sciences, even though we can supposedly check each other by repeating the experiments. I take it that it’s even more true in Social Science. So focus on the issue of trust.

If it’s ethical to ask for their employers’ or school teachers’ opinions of their characters (hearsay as well), then what exactly is the argument for this being unethical?

[…] you can identify them with near, and in some cases absolute, certainty.

Certain enough to be sure it isn’t “joe job”?

If the GAC is going to take adverse action based on this, the applicant deserves a hearing and a opportunity to refute the… the… the… it’s not evidence. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

“raising doubts about whether he is honest” I presume this means that doubts can be raised about whether he has embellished his application. In that case why not check? If one needs to, ask for proof or at least more details from the applicant. Ask him in for another interview; at least, interview him over the phone. Otherwise, it would seem at least possible that there is a case of mistaken identity, and the applicant is rejected for something he did not do.

If the question is not whether the student has been honest on his application but whether he is honest as a person, then it would seem that the department should not take it into account, unless it is willing to fire all non-honest professors as well.

I don’t know why private vs. public makes a difference ethically. Perhaps legally (don’t know about that), but surely it makes no ethical difference.

The question itself seems to rest on a nasty assumption that the admissions committee has the right to all the information they can get their hands on about someone, as if because they have the power they are the responsible good guys, when in fact admissions is just a particular social game. Some commonsense reflection should expose that people speak differently in different contexts, that we can say good things about someone to their face but then say bad things about them elsewhere, and that we can even be telling the truth both times, based on complex impressions or changing moods. Especially in (supposedly) ‘safe’ situations, people tend to act out their less pleasant impulses, which then represent one extreme of a person’s spectrum of attitudes rather than the mean. Unsurprisingly, people in interviewee/applicant positions tend to show their sunnier side.

To me, the line “doubts about whether he is honest and the kind of person it would be reasonable to want other students to deal with” sounds like a possible cover for resentment for (a sense of) having been played. Though they’re not exclusive.

The ‘doubts about honesty’ bit is a sham however, suggesting that if he had said these things to their faces they would’ve graciously noted his candor. One might expect the ‘trust and honesty’ thing to go both ways, in that not only would the student not think things without expressing them, but the admissions committee wouldn’t, without any notification, go and try to identify applicants’ online pseudonyms.

I think it’s fair to take evidence of dishonesty, unpleasantness and lack of scruple into account. In the short term, a nasty and unscrupulous person could poison the atmosphere among grad students (and beyond) in the department. In the long term, there’s the concern about how such a person would behave as scholar, colleague, and teacher in the future. People can, of course, change; but that doesn’t mean that they will. And someone who steals other people’s work, or bullies more vulnerable members of the same department, can have a very bad effect on morale, scholarship, and learning.
That said, I agree with a number of the other posters that some confirmation that this person is a jackass, beyond the evidence of supposedly anonymous posting, is in order. Interviews might not do the trick — such a person might be a capable dissembler — but at the least, checking with the person’s referees seems to be in order. And maybe some googling, to see if (s)he has ever exhibited similar behaviour under his(her) own name. I’d be very, very wary of mis-identification.
I’m glad that it wound up being a hypothetical problem, though.

So it depends on how well you think you can identify them. I hope you’d use more than the content of the posts.
I’m going to guess that a lot of people reading this are not familiar with all of the support sites out there for people who are applying to graduate school. On these sites, people post their entire SOP, their CV, LORs if they have them, grades, transcripts, and so on and so forth for critique by other people.

In these situations, it’s painfully easy to identify people. All you need to do is match SOP and CV/academic background.

“In these situations, it’s painfully easy to identify people. All you need to do is match SOP and CV/academic background.”

Yeah, I’m applying for grad admissions now, and I’m sure I can be easily identified on the basis of the subject and general GRE scores I posted. I really ought to take them down.

The post re: Joe Job is right–it may seem pretty easy to identify people, but what if you’ve wrongly done so? I imagine commentary on such forums has much to do with convention as much as individual personality.

Along these lines, there have been plenty of times that I’ve read the job forums on the Chronicle of Higher Ed and kind of thought I knew somebody was a candidate for a position in my department, but every time, I ended up being wrong–and as often as I find academia to be a small world, I’m almost just as frequently reminded that it’s actually quite a large one.

Also, newly admitted graduate students tend to be full of cheek until they read their first bout of theory or what have you. Sooner or later, everybody’s humbled, and by the time one finishes, one hardly resembles the silly person he or she had been prior to getting beaten down by 10 years of apprenticeship.

Stick to the application files. I would think most departments have enough applicants that it’s just too much extra work to even begin to look for evidence of a candidate’s abilities outside of that file.

Hasn’t it always been in these kind of cases that gathering information without the knowledge nor consent of the subject is dodgy?

I’ve never thought so, not for low values of “gathering.” E.g., if among your faculty colleagues (who might otherwise not be involved in this search) is someone who might happen to know one of the candidates, through having taught at his/her institution perchance, I would have thought it curious, if not downright remiss, to ask “Do you know this candidate? If so, what is your impression of him/her?”

Or are you seriously suggesting that we cannot in good conscience ask anything of anyone but those referees whom the candidate him/herself has nominated?

“Last thing—“taking into account” is not the same as “regarding as decisive”. One thing you’re being asked is how much weight to give to it, if any.”

If it’s given any weight at all, then it will have the potential to be decisive (assuming all else is equal or close). If you’re going to give it any weight, you have to allow for the chance that it will be the deciding factor in rejection.

Rejecting the person on the basis of this posting could only possibly be acceptable if the department in question were willing to actually confront him with this accusation and get a response. As Lee notes in #25, it is painfully easy to be/appear to be someone else, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

For example, maybe someone lied a little bit when he posted his malicious comments so that he couldn’t be caught, and unintentionally provided information that matched 100% with someone else.

In response to Dan, I totally agree that issues of sexual orientation are much different than that of personality, esp when considering an applicant (bad analogy I guess). My issue was more along the lines of this: if the academic honesty/integrity of the student is not in question (which can be obtained by school records), then should the committee judge the applicant for having a less than socially acceptable personality (lacking tact or wisdom of what’s appropriate to say at what times and to whom)? The student may very well just be unpleasant/arrogant, but perhaps that could change over the course of studies (as tends to happen with students once they face the reality of classes…which was mentioned by someone else above).

On another note, whether or not the committee intends to take it into consideration, I highly doubt that they can act as though they never saw the website. Psychologically, once the seed is there…it’s very hard to uproot. So I highly doubt they could disregard it even if they wanted to…In that case, they should decide whether or not they will take that sort of information into account prior to visiting the website (tempting though it may be).

Would any of the commenters be happy with their contributions (and contribution history!) here being used to judge them as “not the kind of person” a potential employer would want others to deal with and not “entirely honest”? I certainly wouldn`t (regardless of the quality or otherwise of my personality as revealed through my comments). I certainly wouldn`t want my intellectual capacity judged on the basis of my comments here!

Seems to me the same should apply to a student. God, some of you lot have revealed an interest in Science Fiction! You think that`s gonna get you hired?

abb1

Your post makes not sense at all. Why not ask the relvant question and get even more information on which to base you decission.

Are you really this affraid of an uncomfortable social situation?abb1

Your post makes not sense at all. Why not ask the relevant question when you have the chance and get even more information on which to base you decision.

Are you really this afraid of an uncomfortable social situation?

If you can’t ask this kind of question you given the background to the situation we are describing you have no business being on an admissions committee.

You either ignore it or you give the person a chance to explain it. It’s absurd to take an online persona as representing the whole person – many people (including me) do in fact adopt a quite different personality online. Plus there is the real possibility of you hanging the wrong person.

I’m appalled that you’d even think of taking it into account without further investigation.

Or are you seriously suggesting that we cannot in good conscience ask anything of anyone but those referees whom the candidate him/herself has nominated?

If you want to select the best academic candidate with some sense of procedure and impartiality, I’d say yes, unless you’ve said so in advance.

Of course reality is different, and not everything done oustside of procedure is an ethical problem. But keeping to a strict procedure prevents lots of (ethical) problems. Like the one discussed here.

Would any of the commenters be happy with their contributions (and contribution history!) here being used to judge them as “not the kind of person” a potential employer would want others to deal with and not “entirely honest”? I certainly wouldn`t (regardless of the quality or otherwise of my personality as revealed through my comments). I certainly wouldn`t want my intellectual capacity judged on the basis of my comments here!

I wouldn’t be happy either sg. But if I am really that concerned about how potential employers might view my opinions, I shouldn’t post them on blogs and sign my name to them. And if I take the risk of posting them anyway under an invented screen name, I should be very circumspect about divulging personal information that might allow a reader to put two and two together.

We might wear various masks in dealing with different parts of our world, but others are not morally required to judge us based on the mask of our own choosing.

abb1, you don’t need to do a cross examination to get to the bottom of every issue, but I think fairness requires that you take into account an awareness of your own limited knowledge if there is any realistic possibility that you might be wrong. It’s not life and death, but the shape of a person’s future career is at stake, and you owe them at least that much.

Just say: “look, some information has come to our attention, and it wouldn’t be fair to go forward without giving you a chance to comment on it and correct the record.”

The applicant may say, “This sucks! This is bullshit! What are you doing lurking on student websites! You guys are a bunch of pathetic asshole losers! I wouldn’t go to your damn school now if you begged me!” But then at least you gave the applicant a chance to set the record straight, and he declined.

What do you mean abb1?

Is your claim that before you ask the evidence is good and you can base a decision on it but after you ask the evidence becomes either better or worse depending on whether you get an admission or denial, and that in the latter case the evidence becomes some much more unreliable that it is no longer relevant to the decision at hand?

It seems to me that if a simple denial can undermine the usability of the evidence it was not usable in the first place.

Yes, I do think the committee can take this information into account.

I think if you are sure that the person is who you think it is then it seems reasonable to add information from his/her behavior on the forum to the overall packet of information upon which you are basing your decision especially given that this is a public forum for the discussion of a professional topic (grad program admissions). However, if you cannot be certain then I would proceed with caution.

As an analogy for those who think it is wrong to take additional info into consideration, what do you think of the following? Let’s say you meet a prospective at a conference and you observe him/her behaving in a problematic manner (whether because comments after a presentation are outright problematic or the person treats someone very poorly in the hallway), would/could/should you ignore that experience with this person when you are faced with evaluating his/her potential as a positive contributor to your community?

I think the fact that this information is on a website may be needlessly complicating the analysis. More generally, how would the admissions committee handle gossip of uncertain reliability about an applicant?

In 64, I think A is also an unpleasant person*. Perhaps the applicant would fit in.

I want to second the arguments in 54, and add that I am dubious that the details of CV, etc., are as unique as claimed. Have you really run a complete search for collisions? I have had my paperwork confused with a first-middle-last-birthdate collision; two fellow students in my department have a first-middle-last-birthplace collision; we both know that people tend to leap to conclusions about which name-owner did what, even though they know there’s a collision.

Names, birthdates, and birthplaces are not independent variables, making this system less useful than it’s often supposed. Academic locale and interest are also related. I wouldn’t trust this “we can tell” very far at all.

Back to #54, I also think that hurt feelings which are trying to disguise themselves will leap to find justification where they can, so that their misidentifications will be extra-untrustworthy. People tend to stick to ‘it could have been X’ without thinking through whether it could have not been X; e.g., they will identify ‘really good Boston school’ as the one that makes them wince, forgetting that there are many so described. Nor do I think that there needs to be any maliciousness, or even consciousness, in the person making the misidentification. It’s one of the weak spots of human decision-making, which explicit systems, such as asking the accused, are supposed to patch.

On the other hand, if someone really is making nasty statements and admits to it, it seems fair to me to weigh this in their admission; while it’s true that it might be the feather that keeps them out of the department, it is in that case the feather that lets someone else in.

*Unless there’s some Trollopian arrangement of circumstances in which A is innocent and hounded. Innocent and never otherwise suspected of anything, dunno; prudence and virtue together suggest that A should have expressed benign puzzlement and passed on, but that’s a bit saintly to expect.

abb1 and ben m, in #64 and #66, have two different cases: is the applicant telling an unpleasant truth about the department, or about the applicant?

In the first case, punishing the applicant for it is hypocritical, because it’s punishment for not keeping a secret that was already not kept by the department.

Bringing up these cases suggests that even though there is some consensus that additional information should be considered there are (ethical) limits. Is googling someone standard procedure or out of bounds? Saying something positive about a relative/former student? Exchanging information with other GAC’s? Etc.

I still think that it is better to state those rules before evaluating student admissions, and be open about them towards those students.

An honest and fair admission process is much more valuable than some anecdotal information that you might not use because of those damned procedures.

abb1; In your example, surely it’s either true and irrelevant (and if the dept. thinks it’s irrelevant, they oughtn’t complain that people talk about it); true and relevant, in which case they should deal with the beam in their own eye; or false, in which case I’d say it’s an unpleasant truth about the applicant.

I know my argument contradicts actual hierarchical habits, that every criticism upwards should be smothered in hushed appeals to ‘appropriateness’. I think we should do something to counterbalance that, though, esp. given the uncertainty that not-famous-harry and I are thinking of; stung vanity is going to be most comfortable accusing some Not-Like-Us sap of ‘inappropriate incollegiality’.

Since the comments are “anonymous,” how, exactly, does the decision-making committee propose to “identify” the commenter? If they are making the identification based on the “identifying” traits the commenter posts, are they considering the fact that someone could be “spoofing” the commenter’s identity? If they plan on tracking the commenter down via IP addresses and such, what does that say about the breach of academic freedom?

I think they better just not wander into this swamp…

If you’re certain about the identity link, then it’s ok to take into account, but without real certainty you can’t decide anything on the basis of online behavior alone.

Certainty is hard. I don’t know the actual data in question, but it seems unlikely that a link could be made “beyond a reasonable doubt.” I would think that this evidence would probably be the sort of thing ot give rise to some subsequent probing or re-evaluation.

You’d also want to take into account the fact that many people do tend to behave very differently — to the point, much more poorly — in online fora, even without the cloak of pseudonymity. Their “real life” persona may still be a fine fit for the program.

Bottom line: you’re on thin ice making observed pseudonymous internet behavior a deciding factor for anything.

Harry,

From an ethical viewpoint, I think this is pretty shaky, but I would also look into the legal aspects (of which I am quite ignorant). Personally, I wouldn’t even consider utilizing this information without asking the applicant directly if they were responsible for these comments and if they could explain them. The possibility of sabotage from another applicant/personal enemy is just too high.

Of course, I’m a little sensitive on these kinds of issues since my initial graduate school application at the school of my choice was rejected due to a nasty letter from my (crazy) former boss. I was only able to get the initial decision overturned because I had a copy of letters he sent to other institutions and I was able to convince several of his co-workers to discuss his mental instability with the admissions committee at my school of choice..

Here is an ethical problem for you. You are the dean of a department. One of the (untenured) professors in your department is very cordial and respectful to you in person, but you found out that when he goes home he tells his wife that you are a total freaking asshole and worse. You know this because you are sleeping with his wife.

First question: Should you arrange to have this person terminated? Question 2: Would your answer be different if you wanted to continue diddling his wife?

What I don’t like about many of these posts is that they assume that the legal model of factfinding should be used by admissions committees. Sheesh, I even saw an adverse reference to hearsay, which–BTW–is accepted by most legal systems, including US administrative hearings.

If a lawyer’s sense of procedural fairness were the summum bonum of all, why not tear down the laboratories and replace them with courts of law? “Cross-examination is the greatest engine devised to find truth,” and all of that.

Going to the merits of this mess, I agree with the commentators who said that it is easier to feel confident in an identification than to be accurate in the identification. But I do think that collegiality is relevant, in student admissions, as well as faculty hires. And all human decisions are made behind a veil of ignorance and misinformation.

Students should be judged on the basis of their application packets. The schools should be able to determine how we’ll they’re doing based on the quality of their incoming classes and the work that they do, not whining on anonymous Internet message boards. You shouldn’t take avenues that students use to blow off steam against them. If they know that they are being watched in such forums, those forums cease to be useful.

And absolutely the answer changes for private versus public universities. I think public schools should be held to higher ethical standards, if only because they are funded in part by taxpayers. That distinction doesn’t necessarily trickle down into the actual classroom, but I think in all other ways — selection committees especially — cognizance of public status is very important.

I wonder what the members of the admissions committee are doing reading a Web site intended for students to blow off steam and dish about their prospects. I would suggest they refrain from doing so in the future.

But they’ve got a problem now, and if the on-line crimes of the student in question are really quite serious, I think he/she should be invited in for an interview and asked about it. If he’s sufficiently embarrassed and is otherwise a fine prospect, accept him. If really convincingly denies it’s him, admit him. If he doesn’t deny it and doesn’t get why it’s a problem, he’s likely to cause genuine problems in the department. Dont’ take him unless he’s really so exceptional that the program can’t do without him.

Said interview is the ideal time to explain the facts of life about on-line anonymity and to warn said student that if he’s accepted and you find out he’s continuing this sort of thing, he could lose his place. Or something.

And then STOP READING THE STUDENT WEB SITE.

aaron_m

I’m inclined to agree with your judgement about your case. But I don’t think the meritocracy standard is helpful, and I also think the analogy is wrong.

What’s wrong with the analogy? Contrary to the assumptions of some on the thread, admissions committees are not concerned with making life easy or nice for professors, but they are concerned with making life conducive to good learning for students. Whether someone is collegial or not is relevant to other people’s learning. Especially in a small class, if one person is a monumental asshole (or stupid, or lazy or whatever) that may have a negative effect on other students. I think we have a duty to be concerned about that. We also consider diversity, for example, of interests among students — we want a good fit between them (which demands some diversity and a good deal of congruence).

The reason that the meritocracy standard isn’t helpful is that we are, even in graduate school, trying not only to predict but also to cause learning. How well someone learns in graduate school is not just a function of their past learning, but also of the environment they are in (at least, that’s what I would like to believe). I have argued for admitted students with weaker files over students with stronger files on the hunch that they would do well in our particular environment. There’s no way of testing whether I was right of course (well, not without large scale studies…).

34: Test Magic Forums

I’m not particularly comfortable posting direct links, but you can see that users post “profiles” and ask for advice, discuss admission decisions, etc. These profiles may include undergrad institutions, test scores, grades, research interests, etc.

Incidentally, this blog post was mentioned in at least one thread on that forum.

A number of people have said that the information is publicly accessible so it should be fine to consider it.

But what would these same people think if a candidate was from a very well-known family or was dating a faculty daughter? Would it be permissible to take information arising from those connections into consideration? — or would the committee not rather try to bracket it out?

My view is that personality, ‘collegiality’, and the like should be held irrelevant save where it is so bad that it indicates the likelihood that the candidate will not manage to complete the programme or threatens to undermine its professional goals.

Not getting along with others, being an ass, being full of anger, even being dishonest in certain areas of one’s life, do not seem to me necessarily relevant considerations. Plenty of excellent scholars are such people, after all — and it’s not clear that they’re worse teachers for it either.

*Shrug*.

Academia is (for my tastes) too social a profession already, esp. in the humanities and social sciences. As one of my fellow grad. students put it: ‘Research gets you in the door but tribal politics get you into bed.’ This makes for a tough balancing act.

On the one hand, tribal politics are unavoidably central to academic life, and managing them well is probably even central to good scholarship and mentorship; so I can understand a committee giving this weight.

But I wish with all my heart that they wouldn’t, and I can’t help but feeling that most of the time these sorts of considerations are too full of slant, too thin on evidence, of too transitory a nature (because people do grow up, and sometime quickly) to result in other than superficial decisions.

is it wrong for the GAC to take this information about the applicant into account when making a decision?

No. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to work with a sociopath, you’ve encountered this “say one thing in public, and something different to everyone else in private.” In the case of a sociopath, one bad apple spoils not only the rest of the apples in the barrel, but the barrel as well.

I recommend watching the movie Final Cut. The plot revolves around a bio-electronic implant that wealthier parents had implanted in their children, and didn’t tell them until they reached age 21 that the child had one. It does talk a little bit about some of what we’re hashing out here: would you behave differently if you knew that everything you saw and heard was recorded and would be played back later?

aaron_m does have some good points in 78. However, the hypothetical wasn’t that the person was unpleasant, but that saying malicious things about departments he has visited, raising doubts about whether he is honest and the kind of person it would be reasonable to want other students to deal with, and generally revealing himself to be utterly unpleasant. I for one picked up on the “whether he is honest” more than “are they unpleasant.”

I’ve worked with both (I am a programmer – a profession that seems to have plenty of unpleasant people), and the dishonest ones are far more painful to work with and can frequently result in negative productivity for a group/company: fire them and not only productivity improves, but so does morale. I’ve also worked with guys so unpleasant that they’d make milk curdle. Or make lemon juice seem sweet by comparison. In the workplace, getting things done is far more important than how pleasant you are. Getting caught being dishonest is the career killer.

Secondary question: does it make a difference to your answer…

No.

45. Would any of the commenters be happy with their contributions (and contribution history!) here being used to judge them as “not the kind of person” a potential employer would want others to deal with and not “entirely honest”?

More and more employers require background checks. Especially for jobs that have no legitimate need for one. You should presume that everything you type will be held against you.

Am I happy about that? No. It is just the price of living in the sort of country that the bushistas have turned America into. At least when people google for my name, I don’t show up for more than a few pages.

I don’t think anyone would have a question about the ethics of this if the person were posting material such as fantasies about killing women, or Jews.

Due diligence, particularly because it could open the university to a lawsuit later on.

If in this case, the poster demonstrates fraud or lying, I think if the posting can be traced back to the applicant in question, it should definitely go into the pot of things-to-be-considered.

IT all depends on how much credence you are willing to issue to the student who used said same website as a spring board for all GOOD statements, and hence a kissing up factor to his/her benefit.
I highly doubt these kinds of “kind” posts would sway your judgement to the better, so why should these sway your judgement for the worse?

What is fair is fair.

I guess this is a contrarian’s view.

No, and no. I think that treating a very small community, like a graduate program, as if it were a big corporate climate, is crazy. Personalities are definitive of a small community, and admitting an asshole is disruptive. (keep in mind, I’m talking about ethics, not policy, here) If you have evidence in hand suggesting that a prospective member of your community is an asshole, and you fail to protect your community from that assholism, then you’re at least dumb, and possibly acting unethically.

I agree with some commenters here that as policy, you should be as idealistic as possible, but the admissions process allows a great deal of space between ideals and practice, and if you fail to take advantage of this to protect your community from a clear asshole, then you are a fool.

As for the last commenter, I don’t understand at all why it’s not appropriate to consider someone’s personality. Academic departments are very small communities, and personalities affect the professional performance of the people involved. If I were a business guy, trying to put together a “team,” I would certainly consider the personal compatability of the people involved. Again, I’d be foolish not to.

If I were a business guy, trying to put together a “team,” I would certainly consider the personal compatability of the people involved

alternatively you could learn a management style which gets people to leave their crap at the door. A manager or lecturer who can`t manage these problems has more than a personality problem – they have insufficient qualifications for the task.

This kind of argument – oh, we should consider our personal feelings in employing someone because everyone, you know, just has to get along – is a sign of a weakness of purpose. You aren`t willing to suffer a little bit of irascibility or annoyance in your day-to-day dealings, and as a consequence someone loses access to education? That`s pretty crappy.

No Abb1, one doesn`t have to assume that; one could assume that. Certainly as an applicant one should assume one`s potential employer is despicable and is using all available information to assess one`s application (including what one said on, for example, a thread on ethics in Crooked Timber). But as an employer/admissions assessor etc., one does not have to include information irrelevant to the position (or vaguely relevant if the employer is a pathetic loser who can`t handle a few differences of opinion).

I have worked in a lot of places where management were incapable of handling differences in opinion between staff; in one largely left-wing instituted I hired a person who was clearly unsuited to the temperament of the fellow staff, as well as right wing, and part of my management tasks involved shielding this employee from (admittedly minor) attitude problems where they might have affected this employee`s work. The employee in question revolutionised the workplace and left it in far better condition than it was in before that employee`s arrival. Had those on the hiring committee with me been able to infer evidence of this person`s occasionally racist, often irascible and sometimes unpleasant manners they would ultimately have missed a staff member worth their weight in gold. I was also on a hiring committee where a white South African was refused consideration because they had written “Race: white” on their application. The argument was that the individual must be a racist to have put such a point on their CV. To me, this shit was irrelevant – it was a technical position, and irrelevant whether the person in question hated anyone of any race. Sure they wouldn`t be going to work barbecues, but who cares? [and incidentally, in the former workplace being able to function as a close-knit team was important, which was why good management skills were more important than choosing the “right” person].

To my mind all this stuff about personality comes down to “we won`t be able to get along.” If one wants to “get along” with one`s co-workers one shouldn`t be a manager, and one shouldn`t assign oneself/accept/take responsibility for/allow oneself to be forced to take on the responsibility of hiring anyone. Similarly, one shouldn`t manage small groups because one is going to have to confront people being dickheads at some point.

(And yes, implicit in that is an argument that some people`s personality doesn`t suit their being a manager- so don`t employ me if you don`t like self-contradictory hypocrites).

#87 Harry B

Your criticisms of my example are not compelling.

First, your argument does not amount to my analogy being “wrong.” Rather you argue that there are additional considerations over and above merit that are relevant. It is certainly true that other factors should be taken into consideration, but your arguments do not convince me that merit should not clearly dominate the process.

If it is true that a PhD is a jerk to such an extent that they would undermine the ability of other PhDs to learn or do their work, then information about their social skills is relevant (as I alluded to in my post). But only if they have demonstrated that they cannot work with others. One can imagine that this will be relevant for PhDs working in teams under a professor, e.g. lots of collective projects and lab work. BUT that is a very specific kind of social problem for a specific kind of task (working in groups). And for Master’s students trying to enter into this kind of PhD programme their ability to work with others is something you can judge much better by asking those they have worked with on collective projects before.

The idea that we can motivate rejecting the candidate based on some general hunch that person A’s personality will inhibit persons B,C, and D from learning is just to abstract and easily manipulated. It risks being reasonable sounding BS in order to justify what you otherwise could not justify, prioritising an individual’s social popularity over academic merit.

How large of an impact can one unpleasant PhD student have on the learning environmental of an entire department? In rare cases I would say that they could have a huge effect, e.g. an ambitious sociopath or an illusive psychopath could be pretty disruptive. If you find half the staff cut up into small bits in the coffee room on day this will of course ruin the learning environment. But in the vast majority of cases it is not a few PhD students that determine the quality of the learning environment, and more importantly a socially difficult student rarely undermines the ability of others to learn baring the group research scenario.

If one could be fairly certain following a blog post that an individual would at the extreme end in terms of disruption then there is a case for using the information. But like many here I have a hard time imagining how one could be certain of that by following a blog post and suspect that there is something else going on here; namely that the committee member just does not like ‘that kind of person’ (maybe they are a libertarian or worse a relativist). Without more information it is difficult to judge.

one thing makes me uncomfortable: nobody is sure who posted the malicious comments. It is more a supposition from the department. Why base your opinion on rumours and suppositions? What if they have misidentified the person?
I totally agree with no-s 25 and 41 above.

No Abb1, it doesn`t have to be stated right there in the rules. It`s also unethical to shoot the applicants, but that`s not stated in the rules. Its a general assumption in life that you don`t get disadvantaged in the important things on the basis of a personal clash with another person. Even if the provenance of that personal clash is definite, not just supposed (as in this case). For example, most people get pissed off if they miss the once-in-a-lifetime chance to see their favourite band because the bouncer doesn`t like the look of them: it`s small beer to the bouncer, but a big matter to the person who misses the band. Same here. The staff on the program are going to have to do their job properly if this person is admitted – that`s small beer (in fact, if they take their job seriously they should appreciate this). If the person isn`t admitted, the staff get to be lazy and the person loses an education. Small beer this is not.

As another example of how this works, suppose you are a part of a group that has to “work closely together.” When you start working together, you are all womanizing scoundrels, and you are all fine with this. Then over time the rest of the team marry and settle down, and you don`t. They no longer appreciate you being a womanizing scoundrel, and so you can all get along, the boss sacks you. You happy about that? It`s not written in the rules that it`s wrong, but it is.

“Getting along” at work and in public does not mean “filtering out people you don`t like”. It means finding ways to interact politely with people who shit you. Every attempt to do what is described in this post moves the world a little step further along the path to being a balkanized, asocial collection of like-minded enclaves. This is bad morally (due to the exclusion inherent in this approach), practically (because it prevents people from learning to cope in situations where they meet strangers, or even from feeling they have to) and ultimately for our progress as a society. Groups of like-minded individuals don`t think clearly about contentious problems. As an example I give you the neo-cons. They certainly filtered out people they don`t like, even when (like semi-colon powell) those people had some very sensible things to say. Result: a few minor mistakes have been made.

Ahah, Thomas, that is a nice little can of worms to open.

But even if the information about their personality was definite, confirmed, 100% true, we should still not consider it. It is just wrong to do so.

Aside from identifying the commenter by the content of his/her comments, how about this one: quite often to register for these on-line boards you have to provide a real email address; that is, in the middle of the registration a link is sent to the email address you provided for you to finalize the registration. So, at this point I (the administrator) have your real email (one of them anyway). Now I take this email and I google it. This could lead me to a number of places: your personal pages, your other postings, various official and semi-official lists, or maybe 3 years ago you placed an online ad to sell your bicycle. Faster than it took me to type this sentence I will be able to match your email with a name. Now I check the list of applicants, and if the name is there, I know who posted the comments. Fair enough?

It’s not, but most people don’t get a new email every time they register for an online chat.

Yeah, yeah, Ned. Sure.

First response, without having read the masses of comments: the wrongness of the act is a function of the admissions committee’s official policy on the use of information outside of the official application. Does the committee consider “word of mouth” about the student–perhaps in the form of early professional activity, participation in conferences, and so forth? Does the impression a candidate makes over the course of informal visits prior to a decision have an impact? If a candidate applies as a transfer after having been affiliated with a program as a visiting student, is his performance over the visit considered when evaluating his appeal as a future colleague? Are personal calls in favor of the applicant to (presumably, senior) members of a department considered? If factors that are not part of a candidate’s official application are relevant–particularly if they can play a negative role (such as a disastrous visit might)–then there seems no strong block to the appropriateness of considering the online behavior, too.

As far as the justice aspect of it, you certainly should give the person the chance to clear the matter up if the person is already aboard, member of your team. I feel that admission is different in this respect. When you apply somewhere and get rejected you never get an explanation. The committee has decided that someone else was a better candidate, they promise that they didn’t hold your age, race and religion against you, and that’s all there is to it.

No Abb1, you`re clutching at straws. The interview is certainly intended to measure your personality but it is clearly in a work setting – not in an anonymous online setting, a bar, etc. So the person`s behaviour then is clearly relevant to their behaviour at work. It is not the case, for example, that a dickhead at home is a dickhead in interviews (I think i interview quite well, thank you very much). And being a dickhead at home is irrelevant to the job.

And to a certain extent we do take into account the high pressure of a job interview in, for example, whether someone is sweating a little, stutters a bit, whatever.

The simple fact remains: it`s okay to be a dickhead, provided you don`t do it at work. Stick to this rule, and you can get a job anywhere you are qualified to work.

Every department website I have ever viewed tells their prospective students/potential applicants what the criteria are for the application evaluation. These include grades, GRE scores, statements of purpose, and writing samples. If an admissions committee is using information other than the criteria given to the applicant, then that committe is being dishonest and unfair to the applicant.

If the admissions committee decides to start browsing various forums and blogs to look for their applicants’ “true” thoughts and desires for various programs and begins to use them in evaluating an application, then they better start warning their applicants that they are doing so.

However, if a member on the admissions committee “happens” to stumble upon this information (even though I don’t know how that would exactly be possible), of course it becomes an ethical dilemma. But ethical dilemmas in regards to “chancing” upon information are quite different from the blantantly unethcial practice of seeking out personal feelings/writings of applicants without their knowledge.

Maybe I’m just cynical, but I have a really hard time believing that the other students in the department are actually the concern here. am i the only one who has seen a parade of total jerks admitted to their department? when there was no reason the faculty couldn’t have figured out they were total jerks from the way they acted at their interviews? or based on the comments of current students about these folks? I’m not throwing my department under the bus here. I don’t think they’re that unusual in their lack of attention to grad student dynamics.

my other point is that I’ve also had the experience of meeting a prospective student in an interview situation, deciding s/he is a total jackass, reporting the bad behavior–including in one case, an unpleasant comment about a specific faculty person–only to see them admitted.

In a couple of cases, I figured out after they enrolled that they really weren’t so bad. Nerves can make some people overcompensate, which comes off “arrogant asshole”. But, a few rejections from other departments and maybe a semester or two of grad school later and they’ve settled down, learned to let go of the ego trip and turned into really decent colleagues. No harm, no foul.