McVenezuela
14-12-2005, 14:12
I've been confronted with a thorny little dilemma. What would you do?
Here's the situation:
I have a friend (she doesn't play NS) who is a PhD student in linguistic anthropology. Her advisor in the anthropology department is the only linguistic anthropologist professor at our university.
Another friend of mine (the two of them don't know each other) is a representative from the graduate student's union in the department, and he regularly attends departmental meetings, including those where subjects of tenure are discussed.
He found out at the last meeting that my other friend's advisor is in a lot of trouble with the department. She apparently hasn't published in a long while and the department isn't happy with her methods. There's also a history of bad blood between this advisor and the department chair. Long story short, the advisor is tenured and can't lose that, but the department has decided that she's no longer fit to sponsor PhD candidates. This will leave my female friend without an advisor, and without hopes of getting a new one at this university, come January.
The thing is, I'm not supposed to tell anyone about this. It's supposed to be a secret until the department announces it, which it's not going to do at least until the beginning of next semester. Neither my friend nor the advisor knows about this yet.
If I tell my friend with the problem, then my friend in the grad students' union is likely to get in serious trouble, as it will certainly get back to the advisor.. If I don't tell her, she loses a whole month of time she could be using to make arrangements at another university and by the time she finds out she could easily lose at least one entire semester. Whether or I say something or not, one of my friends gets screwed over somehow.
Not a good situation.
Here's the situation:
I have a friend (she doesn't play NS) who is a PhD student in linguistic anthropology. Her advisor in the anthropology department is the only linguistic anthropologist professor at our university.
Another friend of mine (the two of them don't know each other) is a representative from the graduate student's union in the department, and he regularly attends departmental meetings, including those where subjects of tenure are discussed.
He found out at the last meeting that my other friend's advisor is in a lot of trouble with the department. She apparently hasn't published in a long while and the department isn't happy with her methods. There's also a history of bad blood between this advisor and the department chair. Long story short, the advisor is tenured and can't lose that, but the department has decided that she's no longer fit to sponsor PhD candidates. This will leave my female friend without an advisor, and without hopes of getting a new one at this university, come January.
The thing is, I'm not supposed to tell anyone about this. It's supposed to be a secret until the department announces it, which it's not going to do at least until the beginning of next semester. Neither my friend nor the advisor knows about this yet.
If I tell my friend with the problem, then my friend in the grad students' union is likely to get in serious trouble, as it will certainly get back to the advisor.. If I don't tell her, she loses a whole month of time she could be using to make arrangements at another university and by the time she finds out she could easily lose at least one entire semester. Whether or I say something or not, one of my friends gets screwed over somehow.
Not a good situation.