Letter about class on March 20th

Dear Students,

One of the students in the 3 + 2 class has expressed unhappiness at the class being cancelled on Friday and emailed their objections to everyone. Making angry and incorrect accusations in such a public way is unprofessional and unacceptable in a university setting and will not be tolerated. We will address this issue here now.

Sabrina and Sue were both on campus all day Friday. We traveled from Skopje to Tetovo on Friday, in the morning, in the snow. We have many other classes and duties at SEE University besides teaching on the Master’s program.

There was a lot of snow accumulating in Tetovo, and the roads seemed to be getting worse as time went by, so we decided, for safety’s sake, to tell students not to come to class. We felt this was necessary to do as soon as possible so that students wouldn’t travel all the way to Tetovo for nothing. Perhaps some students did not get the message before they left home and that is regrettable, but we did the best we could under the circumstances. We sent emails at about 12 p.m.

Personally, I (Sue) now have more work to do as a result of the cancellation, as I find it more difficult and time consuming to do marking online. It would have been much easier, for me, to have had the class on Friday and have students submit their work and do the test in class. However, because of our deep care of and concern for students’ safety, we decided that student safety was much more important than our own personal convenience.

In future, if anyone wishes to discuss any issue relating to the courses, classes or marks, this needs to be done in a respectful way, privately, between the teacher and student involved first. If this does not result in a satisfactory result for the student, they are then welcome to pursue their problem with the head of the department and the university administration.

This student has been advised to apologize for their actions before they continue in the program. If this is not acceptable to them, we will have to investigate a way to resolve this issue that is acceptable to everyone.

Sincerely,
Susan Boles
Sabrina Resa