11/18/15 Provost Email

                I am currently in a student group that focuses heavily on social justice related problems within the world, but even more specifically in Minneapolis. This group has made me see power holders more critically, but it has also made me realize that people in power do what they have to do in order to maintain that power. I have definitely seen this power struggle in the university provost’s latest email. There are still problems with serious racism running rampant in the world, and the recent events in Missouri sparked up another conversation. Students on campus were outrage and organized themselves in order to show support for other students across the country. This was all fine until the university saw this as a problem they didn’t plan for. Naturally, an email is sent out trying to get power back.

                First, the provost tries to show her support for students on behalf of the entire university staff, but having this email sent out must have angered people who tried to organize themselves without the university’s help. She used language like “held useful conversations” and “an obligation to address this problem.” This was all fine, but it definitely made it feel like student protests were burdening the university. In the textbook in the chapter about organizational communication ethics there is a passage that reads, “The uninformed member simply does not know enough about the organization’s missions and purpose to articulate them to self or others (142).” In relation to this, I think the university believed that students were completely oblivious to what the university needed. To an extent this may be true, but the email sent out was worded in such a way that made students seem like an entity that needs to be contained. Hence why the university set up very specific meeting places and times to talk about the universal problem. It was a very interesting approach to the recent events, and I’m not quite sure that the students within this university appreciated being contained on an issue they feel so passionately about.