Students Told Their Professor Is Dead While Waiting For His Class To Start

I found this pretty interesting story. I think this was a big mistake on the school's part and pretty immoral.
Their teacher died a few months before (in the summer), and the school decides to e-mail the students of his death while they are all waiting in his classroom, waiting for his class to start. I feel bad for those students whom came prepared with purchased course materials.

Remember the "15 minute rule" in college where if a professor wasn't there 15 minutes after class was supposed to start, you were allowed to leave? Well, some students at University of Pennsylvania got the extreme version of that, when their class was canceled because the professor died.

But it's not like he died that afternoon, he died over the summer and no one in the administration thought to cancel the dearly departed Dr. Henry Teune's political science lecture. Damn, tenure is a hell of a think!

Eventually the administration sent out an email to the enrolled students telling them the class was canceled due to death. They got the email while they were waiting in the classroom. Yup, they bought the books, showed up for class, and BAM, your Blackberry goes off with the news that the very guy you're waiting for is dead and now you have the afternoon to go back to your dorm and think about your own mortality. That's the worst part of this story—you can't even go out and party after you get the news and be all, "Whoo-hoo class is cancelled! Pack the bowl!" A guy actually died.

Original story:
gawker.com...

What are your opinions on this??

I made sure to search first, so hopefully this hasn't already been posted!

Gotta love academic bureaucracy, no? Not cancelling the class was probably an oversight. Someone thought someone else was handling it... Epic fail.

Students will be refunded for tuition and text material (there is always a grace period at the beg. of semester for changes) but that's not really the point of the story.

***

Yep, just found a copy of the email: here

——Original Message——
From:
Subject: PSCI 291-301 Canceled
Sent: Sep 13, 2011 2:23 PM

PSCI 291-301 is canceled.
We are so sorry for this last minute cancellation.
With Dr. Henry Teune’s passing, this course should have been cancelled
over the summer and
was an oversight.

Yea I'd say it was definatley handled poorly by the school.If the guy had just died it's entirely different.And also you'd think that someone would've went to the classroom and told the students in person instead of through email.I know if it were me I'd be demanding my money back for everything I had to buy.Classless on the school's part for sure.

reply to post by QuantumPhysicist


Sounds like a case of one department not fully communicating with the other, happens a lot actually, I work for govenment school systems and very rarly does the left hand inform the right so to speak. I can see this happening quiet easily now a days, budget cuts. lack of staff, etc..

They should be immediately finding places for those students in other classes or refunding the cost of their books, as this was clearly the school's bad in every aspect and they had time to rectify the situation.

Of course, that would be the legitimate thing to do.

I have to admit, this story made me laugh out loud a little, even though it's not really funny. I just pictured all those students waiting in class, suddenly receiving an email:

"Welcome to your first day of class! Oh, btw your teacher is dead and class is cancelled"