I got an email sent to the webmaster@uakron.edu address today and it was a winner. I’m not sure what the category was, but it won anyway. The names have been changed to protect, well, everyone involved.
The emailing individual – let’s call him Ron – was reaching out to connect with someone and gave their full name – but let’s just call her Suzy. Suzy had submitted her thesis – in 2006.
Hmmm…
And Ron would like to connect with her to provide…a correction.
On the thesis. Submitted in 2006.
Can you imagine having the audacity to do something like that? To have read a thesis from 2006 – here in 2025, mind you – and then send an email to a stranger (me) to try and get an email address for the master’s student in question – to correct them?
I, as you can imagine, cannot imagine doing that.
I was a little dumbfounded for a few minutes, then my problem-solving algorithms kicked in.
- The academic department would be a dead-end – it was too far back.
- The thesis would have been published in the library, but any contact info including in the submission would have been long expired. Likely a UA email address in a system that no longer existed.
- I could suggest they try social media, but that seemed too obvious.
And then:
- Well, if they submitted a thesis, chances are they are an alumnus of UA.
So, I called up a colleague in the Alumni office and explained the situation. And sure enough, our thesis submitter was an alumni and there was a current email address on file.
It would be unethical to give out contact information, obviously, but I asked if there was a procedure to pass along a message. Sure enough, there was – and my colleague was happy to take it from there.
I forwarded the note with some official-sounding language in the hand-off, and then my part was done.
But, I kinda wanna hear how it turns out. The sensible approach for Suzy would be to just ignore the message. Delete. End of story.
Or, she could point out to Ron that everything was correct – and approved by a committee of expert faculty members – in 2006. If there’s a correction to be made based on new data, well, sorry about your luck, that’s not how that works.
Or, it could go, “How dare you, Ron! I’m coming after you and your children!”
In any case, I’m still amazed by the audacity.
Though I guess – in 2025 – it really shouldn’t surprise me.