A professor at Cornell University is in hot water after sending out a class-wide email asking for help identifying two maskless students, describing one as having a ‘fairly prominent hooked nose’, so he could fail them.
Bruce Monger, a professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, apparently sent out the mass email looking to identify two students who weren’t wearing a mask in a recent Introductory Oceanography course.
Students, faculty and staff at the Ivy League university in Ithaca, New York, are required to wear masks while indoors.
‘I wanted to ask you for your help in identifying two ocean students who were photographed with their masks off during the ocean class last Friday,’ Monger wrote in the email, which was shared to Twitter.
The message sent to the large introductory course described the two students’ physical appearances in great detail.
‘They were sitting next to each other in the balcony’s front row of seating,’ he said before adding physical descriptions of the two.
‘One student is a male with red hair and a fairly prominent hooked nose,’ the professor said, adding that the student’s hair was ‘pretty long’ and that he had been wearing a blue sweatshirt and eating that day in class.
‘The other student is a male who was sitting to the left of the red head. He has short brown hair (maybe 1-1/1 to 2 inches in length) and a small a nose. He wore a grey hoodie sweatshirt. He spent the whole lecture with his mask down around his chin.’
Monger concluded the email saying he will be failing the students once they are identified.
In response to the email, which was posted online, Cornell issued the following statement:
‘Cornell University has an indoor mask mandate in place for faculty, staff, and students. Dr Bruce Monger, who teaches “Introduction to Oceanography,” one of the largest undergraduate classes at Cornell, regularly advised his students of the mask requirement, noting potential consequences for failing to comply,’ the statement read.
The university said the professor’s actions do not reflect their values as a college.
‘In the email, Dr Monger described the unmasked students’ physical characteristics in ways that do not reflect Cornell values,’ the statement said. ‘Dr Monger has since acknowledged that his approach to dealing with unmasked students in class was not handled in an appropriate manner.’
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