What you don't see

Yee haw, darling, enter the hallowed halls of academe. Politics, politics! Actually, I would be interested in seeing how the group (as individuals, if that makes sense) plots out on that politics website. It would be interesting to have taken the test at the start of the program and again at the end...

That letter is well-written, truly. As an outsider it seems like a reasonable request to me.

Unfortunately, I must disagree with you about this email for a number of reasons:

1. Half of communication is reliant on the interpretation of the receiver, which means that no one necessarily said anything in reference to all of the GSP but because we are considered as a unit in some ways, it was interpreted that way.
2. The nature of this group is such that some of the things we do are, by their very nature, interpreted by outsiders to represent the whole group. This is simply unavoidable.
3. I'm sure I have said/done things that have embarassed my classmates, and the writer of this letter certainly has, so we are all at fault.
4. If someone has offended someone else, I would hope their first course is to go directly to that person and address it, not write a circular email, thereby exposing the conflict to everyone.
5. As this is the first time the topic has been addressed, the inflammatory/accusatory nature of the email seems entirely unnecessary.

That is all.

I have to agree - written communication that is accusatory in nature gets you no where except people feeling hurt and pointing fingers at each other. I learned this in student government when some of my fellow earnest student gov't officers partook in a memo war. In the endgame we were all left more sure of our original positions and a little emotionally battered. We weren't able to work together afterward. If you can't face the person directly with whom you have a problem, don't expand the issue to make it everyone else's problem with a pansy, self-important, passive aggressive email.

You think that's accusatory? Damn, you both need to see the stuff we get at my school. That was tame.

true, true... it goes down differently in schools, doesn't it? when my mom worked in a school she had some stories about how cruel admin and teachers were to each other...

Well it proves the point that communication is halfway in the speaker and halfway in the listener. I read it one way as a third party, you (kjersten) read it another as a third party, and Mark, as a nearly first (?) party reads it one way (granted, closer to how you read it).

I still think the request not to say "we" makes sense. Having spend two years in a program with 23 turned 16 people (I think), that We Syndrome thing is obnoxious! Yes, Mark is right that some things are unavoidable (being seen as a unit, etc) but that doesn't mean it should be encouraged or, rather, it doesn't mean it shouldn't be discouraged.

All this talk of "we" takes me to the conversation starter posting. I think all too often, people are getting lumped together erroneously. If two people that are in a certain demographic or organization do or say anything, a stereotype or generalization can be born. This becomes the opinion or behavior of that entire group. WE love to group people, and then have them figured out, don't we? When is it ok to say we, without everyone's written approval and when is it not?