Dialogue lost amid expletives and invective

By Iowa City Press-Citizen

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University of Iowa professor Ellen Lewin could have saved herself, UI officials and the greater blogosphere a lot of time, energy and frustration recently if she had simply closed her eyes, taken a deep breath and counted to 10 before hitting “send” on her f-bomb reply to a provocatively-worded, campus-wide e-mail sent out by the UI College Republicans.

Perhaps in that extra time, she might have asked herself such important questions as:

- Should I really send this profanity-laden, politically-partisan e-mail from my work account?

- Should I really include my standard e-mail signature to imply that, with this reply, I am speaking out of my capacity as a tenured professor and an esteemed representative of the university?

- Should I, as a tenured professor, really be responding to a student group in such an unprofessional and demeaning way?

If those extra seconds would have stopped Lewin from sending her initial, gut-level reactions - “F-- you, Republicans!” - she could have focused more on crafting the type of critique she offered in her follow-up e-mails. She could have registered her concerns about how the e-mail from the College Republicans - announcing the group's “Conservative Coming Out Week” - was demeaning and offensive to the university's gay and lesbian community, many of whom experienced intense prejudice and rejection when they came out of the closet to their friends and family. She then could have taken up the issue with the UI administrators who approved the distribution of the controversial campus-wide e-mail.

Having failed to stop herself from hitting “send,” Lewin's follow-up e-mails - at the very least - should have offered a sincere and contrite apology for her lapse of professional judgment. Such an apology could have still included her concerns over the original campus-wide e-mail, but only as a means of explaining - not excusing - her action. And if she really wanted to convey those concerns effectively, she needed to make sure she removed any phrases that might come across as sarcastic and insincere.

Tom O'Leary at the website www.LifeGoalAction.com, for example, offers the following steps to ensuring an effective apology:

- Step 1: Make it genuine.

- Step 2: Don't justify your actions.

- Step 3: Make a commitment to change.

- Step 4: Phrase your apology carefully.

- Step 5: Be prepared for an awkward conclusion.

Unfortunately, Lewin didn't follow all of those steps. She did promise never to make such a mistake again, but her subsequent e-mail -- “I admit the language was inappropriate, and apologize for any affront to anyone's delicate sensibilities” - merely added insult to injury.

There was a similar blow-up back in 2007, when the UI College Republicans, as part of that year's “Conservative Coming Out Week,” proposed a game of capture the flag that would have pitted a “border agents” team against an “illegal immigrants” team. After receiving widespread criticism that ranged from “insensitivity” to charges of racism, the group finally bowed to public condemnation and cancelled the event.

But UI officials were right not to interfere with the game at all. As then UI interim President Gary Fethke noted, every student group has the right to be “tasteless” if it so chooses. And even without any direct action taken by faculty and administration, the student group finally realized that whatever productive dialogue they were hoping to provoke had spiraled out of their control.

By not taking a few seconds to reconsider her action - and by trying to justify her indefensible lapse of judgment - Lewin ensured that whatever productive dialogue she was hoping to provoke would be lost within a cyber-storm of expletives and invective being thrown in all directions.