HolyFuck no wonder college kids turn out such pathetic losers these days
the teachers are Fucking Morons.....

Dan's is probably the best advice.

How to interact with technology should probably be taught in middle school. Text, email, social media—it's permanent and out of your control once you hit send. Gossip, nudes, secrets... keep that shit to yourself until you see your friends in person. Wanna talk shit? Pick up the phone.

My advice would depend a bit more on WT's background. Is she a newly minted Ph.D in a coveted tenure track position, or someone with a day job who is doing some adjunct teaching on the side? If this is a job that she has been working towards for years, and obtained after fierce competition, I would consider more serious damage control, including getting a new number. In this case, she should have a network of former advisers and classmates with whom she can seek some more expert advice. But if she is professional who is teaching a single course as much for enjoyment as for income, which seems more likely, then I would just pretend it didn't happen, and play seriously dumb if anyone questions me. I would not broach this with anyone in the department or administration.

Why the hell would you put your students phone numbers in your phone without them texting first?

Also, unless you have a dedicated work phone, offer students you email. Never your personal number.

I suppose it could have been worse for WT. I knew a little who naturally called her partner daddy, which is how she had him in her phone too, until she almost texted her dad something graphic and sexual meant for her daddy.

Get a new number, and tell your students that your old phone was stolen.

I'm not the most adept at this sort of technology, but why couldn't she just delete the contact and message then block the number? The student didn't know who it was and teach can always give the student her official college email address if the student inquires...

As someone with about ten years in academia under my belt, I would advise you DEFINITELY DO NOT tell your boss about this. Like, under no circumstances, no matter how well you get along with them. Admins, deans, department chairs are not your allies. (In the wonderful off-chance that you're unionized, contact your union for advice.) And, at my university, there's a sexual harassment that would actually oblige me to inform someone if you conveyed that this had happened, so even a coworker might not be a great idea (but I doubt you have the same policy, and I'm sure plenty of people wouldn't abide by it/wouldn't know it was in place...still, worth checking).

Dan's basic idea is right. Document what happened in writing and send it to someone, even if it's just yourself (but if you have a friend you can send it to, that would be better).

I think the best thing to do is nothing (beyond the documentation). Students are, in general, not the digital natives op-eds would have you believe, and more likely than not they just laughed about it and forgot about it. Changing your number might help, but seems unlikely. If it comes back to you, you have the documentation, so presumably you're ready to own up to it if it comes to that...no sense in continuing the lie at that point.

DO NOT DOCUMENT IT BY SENDING AN EMAIL! An email is literally Internet content and can be sent or posted literally anywhere in the world and viewed by any of the 2 billion people on the Internet. It doesn't matter if you send the email to your best friend. Just don't do it.

Instead, write a description of what happened, have a friend witness it (not a colleague at the school, but perhaps a trusted colleague at another institution or your old professor/mentor), and then have it notarized so it is date-stamped. You might want to store an electronic copy on your own computer but that depends on who has access to that.

FWIW, from what the LW said I don't think there's anything to worry about. If the student didn't recognize the number, they've mostly likely already forgotten about it. Always remember this great quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: "You wouldn't worry so much about what other people think of you if you realized how seldom they do."

I think this is fake. Or the LW is the stupidest teacher on earth.

I've worked in education before. Rule number one in almost any teaching context is not exchanging personal phone numbers with students (along with all manner of social media). Teachers have school-based phone numbers, email, and social media accounts, which they can utilize after hours if necessary.

What the LW has done (if not fake), is totally a fireable offense in any college in the country. Going to HR and trying to get in front of this might seem like good advice in many work situations, but not for teachers. This will simply insure her firing sooner rather than later. If the student complains, her job is toast, period.

^^^ Addendum to the above ^^^

Do not give a copy of this document to anyone else, including the witness. They are there to witness your signature, not to verify the accuracy of your account of the events. The only reason to pick someone from academia is that then you are getting the benefit of their professional reputation as your witness.

Thanks @Reverse. Now that you mention it, I agree. Too many red flags. But I thought it was important to speak to Dan's advice re documenting it in an email.

Yeahhh I don't think it's wise to tell your boss about this. What is the mandatory reporting policy and will they feel this (stupidly) qualifies? Don't use your work email at all -- you don't own that thing.

If you want to memorialize to someone else, personal email to a friend elsewhere. But you can also email to yourself or journal it into a cloud document -- anything as long as it creates a timestamped record you can't fake afterwards.

Best way to get around this problem is to not store the numbers in your phone but keep a list on your work laptop or in drop box. If you absolutely MUST have coworkers or students in your phone, add their full name in the 1st name box and change their last name to {Student}, {WORK}, or some other designation that is very obvious that they are NOT your buddies with the same name.

@10 I see where you're coming from, but if I saw somebody taking a paper statement to a notary I'd think they were being really weird about going to these lengths to put a statement on the record -- what is the situation that makes this statement so important to them? Should I trust it?

Because ultimately any statement you make is small potatoes. The big thing in your favor is the facts speak to your making an honest mistake. The big thing against you is it's likely a fireable honest mistake if things come to that.

"I am freaking out about this and I have learned my lesson to never give students your number"
Ok good but the real lesson you needed to learn was something different. Mistake number two was most egregious -- you put all the student names and numbers into your own personal phone?? Why did you have their phone numbers, was there contact information included in a weird class roster? Did you look them up in some sort of student directory? Did you ask them for their numbers??
For chrissake don't pull her aside and make her listen to you talk about dildos. Don't respond, block her number, delete all texts, delete all student numbers from your phone, conduct all communication with students through appropriate work email/office hours channels, be diligent about future friend texting. Be a better person.

Unless LW stopped using her phone immediately (ie, didn't proceed to send the dildo pic to the intended target, and did not post a pic to instagram or send a text to another friend for other reasons, etc) the ditching-your-phone routine won't work, that claim would be busted in a second based on the phone's own location and usage history.

Don't forget to do your Amazon review on the dildo.

What do people think would be a just outcome were this reported to the authorities?

Fake as f

@17. YES! Why would you put all(?) your students on your phone? And yes, how did you obtain all these numbers? As an academic, I don't have access to students' cell numbers. This makes no sense. It's simply baffling and creepy.

I hope this is fake. I've known plenty of weirdo academics, but none this dense. If you're real, listen: your students are not your new friends. Please take some pedagogy and ethics workshops, at least. If you are making this level of mistake, who knows what else you're doing. And yeah, get a new phone.

Fake as fake gets. If by some wacky chance it’s not fake, then she deserves to be fired because she failed to live up to the responsibility she took on when she put every student’s number in her phone, for some impossible to understand reason.

Since apparently (thanks Commenters) in academia you can't safely document this to a boss even if you have a great working relationship with them, documenting it to someone impartial would be better than to a friend. Do you happen to be represented by a union (IIRC most profs might not be, but I those who simply "teach a class" might be more likely to be), or have a lawyer already?

Plus, yeah, get a new number. Think of the inconvenience as reminding /you/ to establish safer professional boundaries with your students.

One would assume that schools offer school-related email accounts to teachers, as well as communication guidelines.
In any case, the lost phone shtick may be too late now and probably disclosing. If indeed this letter is true, a fairly big one, she should wait few days to gauge the situation.

Not to pull a sporty or anything, but if a male teacher sent a sex toy pic to a student of any gender they would be on the verge of losing their job and rightfully so.
This last thought could also be a factor in the fake letter conspiracy.

I have no idea if a teacher should have a student's number, but when I have numbers I've never thought to put them anyplace other than my (Google Contacts, personally) phone.

Won't her identify possibly be already attached to the dildo-pic? In that case, I can just see the student thinking, 'my teacher blocked /me/ after sending me a dildo-pic'?

I dunno if this is fake, but at least it's not one of those letters it's traumatic to read.

@25 CMDwannabe
"This last thought could also be a factor in the fake letter conspiracy."

Are you saying this letter is really from Sportlandia?

Do NOT tell your dean, or department chair! No no no! OMG Dan you are so wrong! @9 is right. At most universities administrators or even all employees are required to make a report on this sort of incident to the Title IX coordinator, regardless of whether they believe it was an accident or not. This triggers the Title IX office to make a mandatory investigation.

I know a lot of professors who give out their cell #, many students like to text to ask questions instead of emails. Especially those who teach online. The safe way to do this is to get a second phone #. Google Voice and similar products let you run a "virtual" cell phone for texts and calls on your regular cell phone, you can set it up so the messages are in a separate app. Some universities run run virtual cell #s themselves so that the communications are logged and FERPA compliant.

Hey LW -- Remind.com

You're welcome.

Curious @ 27
Oh no, and my apologies if it came across that way. That said, I have seen some letters in here dealing with gender and sexuality that looked to me like they could have been written in order to trap Dan as well as commenters.

@CMDwanabe
Given what a 'thing' dic-picks are, and given what a 'thing' #metoo is, I think there's a quite significant chance that this letter was indeed merely crafted to trap us. To create a dick-pick-ish offense the female LW could commit. (Though honestly I think it's equally problematic from/to any gender.)

Yeah, you're fucked. Not much to do but wait until the student puts 2 and 2 together and reports you. There's a slight chance it won't happen, but this is America in 2019, not 1974. You really fucked yourself and no one in an official capacity is going to understand, so good god don't tell your supervisor.

Good luck and keep your fingers crossed that your student either doesn't realize or doesn't report you.

DiscoGirl @7: Definitely get a new number, but don't announce that your phone was stolen. "New phone; who dis?" is a meme amongst the youngsters. It would amount to advertising the blunder.

"but most of people who send inappropriate/dirty texts and/or dildo/dic pics on purpose and them claim they sent them accidentally are men people, WT, and you are not a man person. (You don't make that clear in your letter, but it's clear from the name on your email account)"

How do you know, Dan, that the LW is actually a woman? Aren't you assuming a lot based on their name? You might be misgendering the LW and causing them LITERAL violence. Check your cis privilege.

Site a family emergency.
Quit the job.
Begin waiting tables.
Get behind on the rent.
Lose apartment.
Become crime victim while homeless.
Start turning tricks.
Contract STD.
Find Jesus.
Write best-selling book about experience.
Sell movie rights.
Become star.
Age out of Hollywood.
Go into academia.
Second chance.

screams internally
Yeah, you fucked up. Don't tell anyone in administration, and I second the "someone stole my phone" ruse.

Not as bad as that TA who accidentally sent her nudes to all her students a few years back, though.

I see nothing in this letter that screams "fake" to me.
This just seems plausible: I am a professor and I give my cell number out to my students. Though I don't collect theirs, I might have if I was younger and this was my first gig; I'm old enough to have started teaching in the days before everyone had a cell phone--but I remember gathering everyone's personal email addresses and entering them into my desktop's contacts list.
I feel for the lw: this is a cluster fuck of over-eager, newbie-naiveté, poor eyesight, and some momentary lapse in judgement.

I'd say nothing to anyone. Anything you say to anyone will only make things worse, and spark an official inquiry which will not do you any good. Delete the photo from your own phone, so there's no "proof." Don't mention it to the student and don't leave any kind of written record in the form of emails or texts. If anyone--department chair, dean, HR person, the student or any other student--ever confronts you with it, deny. Pull a Donald Trump and Just Deny. "That's not from me." I don't know how that photo came sent from what looks like my number," etc.
But I doubt you'll ever hear any more about this.

Which doesn't mean that your student hasn't had a laugh and told all her friends about it.

Tough it out. Act like it didn't happen.

I teach at a couple colleges. 1. you are not supposed to give out personal #s to students 2. you are absolutely not able to get your students' personal #s. I am also guessing this is fake, because LW would know she's fucked after watching all the FERPA/Title IX/Sexual harassment videos we have to watch and take quizzes on every year :P

Nocute @ 37
“newbie-naiveté” also means someone young enough to grow up with a cell phone in hand, well versed in the ins and outs of the device as well as etiquette.

As miko @ 38 reassures me, I doubt colleges nowadays don’t require new comers to take mandatory harassment-free training.

People do stuff a lot stupider than this all the time, but the way it's written makes me think it's an episode of some forgotten sitcom somewhere.

So fake. But hell yeah, I'd fire her.

18-to-21-year-olds don't even use phone numbers these days. Take DiscoGirl's advice, and make this the last semester you give your number to students. Or if you must, get a separate phone that's for work only.

To avoid mixing student names with your other contacts, prefix their name with "S." or "Stu." without the quotes.Also assign all students their own group to make it easier to send group texts or just find student names.

@28 Delta...came here to say the same thing. Anytime I need to communicate with someone but want to protect my number I use google voice. Even for a craigslist sale or something like that. It is so easy.

What's all this about whether or not she should send an email? She already sent an email to Dan, didn't she? So there's already an email in her Sent folder that documents the events.

I'm a student and I'm pretty sure at least one professor has put their cell number on the syllabus. Not sure though -- it's definitely not typical at the schools I've attended (I've taken classes at five different colleges over the last six years; long story). I don't remember finding it weird, though.

This sounds like it could happen. Unless the student wrote down the number or it's on the syllabus, I think the chances of her figuring it out are minimal. In fact, even if she has the number, if she never tries to use it she'll probably never figure it out. I never looked twice at the number(s) on the syllabuses because I prefer email or face-to-face to texting or calling. Just hope the student is less of a millennial and more of a secret old lady like me.

...

When I was in residential treatment, I put all the relevant numbers in my phone as "[name of program] [name of person or office]" to ensure I knew exactly what the numbers were for. That way they were also all next to each other in my contacts. If anyone absolutely must have people from work or whatever in their phone, I suggest putting the name of the company or school * before * the person's name so it's the first thing you have to look at.

Yikes! Don't tell your students your phone was stolen and that's why you have a new number. Everyone knows you can keep your transfer your number to a new phone. I would block the student (or all of them, if you can), and/or get a google voice number or cheap phone and tell your students this is the number they should reach you at. Not responding to the text won't ensure anonymity, especially if she just calls the number and gets your voicemail. I think, in reality, she's probably already forgotten about it.

@CMD: I, too, take FERPA training. Every other year.

If she's an adjunct, she may be left pretty much on her own--I have taught at places where not only didn't I have a (shared) office space to see students in, or a physical mail box, I wasn't even given access to the university email. In those days (about 20 years ago), I asked students to fill out an info card (a little 3x5 card) with their personal email and phone number. I don't know whether that school gave students an official school email address in those days, but I know that then and now, lots of students don't check their school email regularly. I never entered the phone numbers into my phone, and don't remember ever using a phone number, but I did have occasion to email students occasionally, and I used their personal email addresses.

If she's young or relatively new to teaching, she's eager and enthusiastic--and wants to be accessible. As an adjunct, she won't have much of a built-in presence on campus, and I can easily believe that she's trying to forge connections.

I still give my cell number to students--it's on every syllabus--and only a handful of students have texted me over the years.

It's quite possible that this is a fake letter, but the incidents could easily have happened.

Tons of professors give out their personal numbers. l tell them not to do it . . . it's usually adjuncts who don't have a reliable office space/campus phone and who often haven't had a lot of mentoring about teaching. But it's definitely not "rule no. 1" as suggested above, and it's definitely "heard of." (I say this from 30 years experience teaching college, including considerable time working with/reviewing the syllabi of a department with 75 or so adjunct faculty).

That said -- I do tell faculty "don't do that." And why would you ever collect their numbers? And then put them in your phone? This reeks of a new adjunct with little experience. This actually may help them skate, though . . . . Deans really don't want to be bothered by having to go to the trouble of firing somebody. I have seen many situations where student complaints either get brushed away or buried by ennui. If the student doesn't follow up/demand a response, that situation often just blows away.

But to be safe, she should give the student an "A"

@47- nocutename: i'm surprised you still give out your personal #; at the colleges where I adjunct (i've been at them for >15 yrs), we can only use their official school email addresses to contact them and to send syllabi/schedules/lecture links/etc. Similarly, they are only supposed to contact us via our school email. Easy to link to on my personal device, but I keep them in completely separate accounts and still have immediate access (like when they email to tell me their running late, in traffic, etc.).

*They're :P obvi, I'm not a journalist/English prof

@30 as opposed to just, I dunno, applying Occam's Razor: Dan and people who post here typically have massively different responses to LW's based on their gender, even when the topic isn't especially gender-specific. There are only thousands of examples.

@30 @51 I mean, could you imagine Dan and the SLLOTD At-Risk Adults advising a man who 'accidentally' sent an inappropriate pic on how to get away with it? Or passing it off as "over-eager, newbie-naiveté, poor eyesight, and some momentary lapse in judgement."

I mean, that's what Aaron Persky did, and now he can't even get a volunteer job.

See. I just deleted a post in response to Sporty. Go me!

@49: I prefer to use the official school email, but I still give the cell phone number out. Virtually no one has ever abused it.
I tend to make easy communication a priority with my students, but I don't ever initiate a text to them.

This might be gendered; I have no idea. I don't know who gives their personal numbers to their students, so I can't say whether more women than men do it. But my advice to just pretend that it didn't happen would be the same if the genders were flipped. Assuming of course, that the mis-sent photo really was sent by mistake.

I haven’t read the letter Sportlandia, I check comments first. And this one sounds very problematic, whichever sex.

Probably depends on the school, but at the university I work at, it's common knowledge that students don't read email. Yes, even class-related ones. If you want them to know about something, you either text it, post it on the class website, or tell them in class. I don't work directly with a lot of students, but the ones I do know, communicate almost exclusively by group chat or text (the only exceptions are students who work for the school; they are required to use email for office work). Most students aren't even Millennials any more, they're Gen Z-ers.

I second the recommendation for Remind.com. They recently changed their policies so that they now charge for a lot of things, but their free service is still good enough unless you're teaching over ten classes. For those who don't know what it is, Remind is an opt-in texting service that allows you to create a contact list, so you can send one text and it goes to everyone on that list. It was designed for educators so they could easily text out a message if, for example, class was canceled due to inclement weather. Or, if you feel you must have a phone to text directly, maybe consider getting one of those pay-as-you-go phones and keep it separate.

i'd suggest she screenshot the conversation she was having with her friend and the part of their contacts that has the student's name next to her friend's so that if the student does report it/ confront the teacher, she has actual evidence to show it was a mistake instead of just her word.

@58 for what purpose, to demonstrate it was a mistake? https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/05/06/40121238/seattle-times-reporter-mike-rosenberg-suspended-over-twitter-messages

NoCute @55: Yes, I can't see how the advice would be any different -- hope the student doesn't figure it out (I doubt most students would immediately think of their teachers when receiving a text of that nature), and don't be so stupid in future because yes, you could get in big trouble -- if the sender, or the student for that matter, were male.

I mean, would Dan have advised telling the dean if the LW were male? Perhaps not, but it's bad advice regardless of the writer's gender. If you want to get fired, yes, tell the dean. If not, cross your fingers and hope that you got away with this honest if completely boneheaded mistake this time.

So am I the only one who thinks this is fake? Firstly she said she gave her students her number, she didn’t say she got the students’ numbers. But say that she did...so if she gave the students her number wouldn’t her name have come up and the student would have known who it was?

@62: No, Tuffy, you are not the only person who thinks it's a fake letter.
But as to your point, the only way a phone identifies the caller by name is if the caller is already in the phone's contacts list by name.
So in this case, unless the student had put her instructor's phone number into her contacts, any texts from the instructor would only show up by phone number, not by name.

The keying in the numbers mentioned in the last couple posts may enhance the fake theory: would the teacher go through the trouble of keying in the entire class numbers by name?
(Letter indicates recipient student's name is similar to the friend's)

Also, is it common for (assuming straight in this case) women to send toys pix to each other?

The letter is questionable, but even if it's made up, something like this COULD happen, so it's worth discussing.

@64 Depends how big the class is. If it's a large lecture class, probably not. If it's a small seminar of like 8 people or something, it's possible she could have put the numbers in her phone. It's also possible she collected the students' numbers and provided hers but that not all her students put it in their phones, even though they wrote down their numbers for her. When professors have given me their numbers on the syllabus I have ignored it because I prefer email.

I have had one professor who collected all our phone numbers in the event she needed to contact us because she didn't like using email. She is a 94 year old widowed woman, a SUNY Distinguished Professor, who has been teaching at my school for nearly 50 years. I thought there was approximately a 0% chance she would abuse having my number.

First time commenter, longtime lurker. I work in academia. 1) DO NOT report this to your dean. Change your phone number. If students ask then yes, your phone was stolen. No good will come of trying to "do the right thing" here. There is a witch hunt mentality on college campuses right now. 2) Do not give out your phone number to undergraduate students. You are trying too hard. They don't need it. They can read email. If they say they can't cause they are gen whatever (I'm a millennial, BTW, and also a tenured professor with a child and a husband who reads between 100-500 emails a day) then you can present them with a learning opportunity. Everyone needs to grow up sometime. 3) If you need to give your phone number out to colleagues AND you want to send sexts in your personal life, use an app to compartmentalize. I use WhatsApp for all of my personal correspondence and the normal text feature on my phone for work. Makes mistakes like this much more difficult.

I'd also recommend entering names of students into your phone as "STUDENT John Smith" or using emojis or something to make it perfectly clear who is who. I say this as a person whose girlfriend has the same first name as my boss.