the beer sem brouhaha

13 December 2001 - 11:25 am

the beer sem brouhaha

this entry is mainly for my own records. probably, most of y'all aren't interested in psych dept grad student in-fighting. if you are, however, you might take particular interest in part (b) of jen's reply to me. oh, and beer sem, for those of you who aren't in the psych dept here, is a bi-weekly (or so) meeting of the grad students at which we discuss each other's research. it used to be called "peer" sem, but the department buys us beer and pizza for the meetings, so it came to be called "beer" sem.

my note to jen:

jen, i've decided not to come to beer sem anymore, and i thought i'd tell you why.

these recent email discussions we've had about beer sem don't sit well with me. i had the impression that beer sem was supposed to be a fun, informal, relaxed way for the grad students in the dept to hear about other students' research and catch up with each other's lives. however, you seem to have taken over, and made it Beer Sem With Your Host Jen O-------, unilaterally making decisions about the format and atmosphere of the evening.

for example, take the comment (below) that you're "not sure [i'll] get another chance this year" to present. unless (and please, tell me if this is the case) the beer sem schedule for the entire rest of the year is full already, i don't see why i *couldn't* get another chance. especially since i think i had perfectly legitimate reasons why this week ended up being bad for me (1. i'd like laura to be able to come, and she couldn't today, 2. because of the nature of my beer sem (pre-experiment, still designing), i'd like a lot of feisty discussion during my talk, and as we all know, lots of feisty discussion tends to take up lots of time, so i'd like to not be limited to 1/2 an hour).

this brings up another point. you said in a previous email that you and diana (in discussion with other attendees) had decided that talks would be strictly limited to 1/2 an hour, including questions. you obviously didn't have this discussion with ALL the other attendees (because you didn't have it with ME) because i would've said i didn't think it was a good idea (i wonder which grad students you *did* have this discussion with). there are probably many students who want/need more than 1/2 an hour to talk, so they can get lots of feedback from the group (reasons include: an experiment still in design phase, or a practice job talk or dissertation seminar, where the talk itself will go an hour).

additionally, even if you do have two speakers, limited to 1/2 an hour each, the atmosphere of the evening will change from being one of casual, friendly, scholarly conversation to a stressful, conference-like atmosphere. to keep to the time table, you will have to hurry the first speaker to start, keep on them about time, limit the question session, and move right along to the second speaker, leaving precious little time for that other important raison d'etre of beer sem, chatting with each other. i would argue that the chatting portion of the evening is just as important as the presentation portion of the evening, since we're such a fractured department. the only time i get to see some of the people in different areas is at beer sem.

finally, let me address the issue of "last-minute cancellations [being] a real pain in the ass." first of all, if i had been the only speaker scheduled for tonight, i would not have cancelled. i imagine most grad students feel that way. if there are *some* grad students who cancel at the last minute leaving no other speakers, perhaps those grad students are flaky and the beer sem scheduler should just keep that in mind when scheduling that person to talk. second, why are last-minute cancellations a real pain in the ass? i don't understand why, in the case of a last- minute cancellation, you couldn't just email 'grad' and say "sorry guys, but so-and-so had to unexpectedly cancel, so there's no beer sem tonight. see you all next time."

i'm offended by your dictatorial attitude and for that reason am boycotting beer sem. i'm sad to lose this outlet, because for me it provides a way to keep in contact with the non-psycholinguists in the dept, and a chance to get input from non-psycholinguists about my research (which is valuable-- people in other disciplines always have interesting questions and ideas). i hope that you will consider my position, and will "discuss it with other grad students" to see if anyone shares my opinion. borogoves

borogoves - fine. sophia's agreed to take the whole hour. i'm not sure you'll get another chance this year. we'll see.

and this situation with you is exactly why we schedule two people per sem, when possible - last-minute cancellations are a real pain in the ass.

jen

and jen's response to the above (here's where you might be interested in how *mean* she is in (b) (near the end):

Borogoves,

First: Beer sem is not run by me alone. I just tend to write the emails, and I also tend to be the person who recruits speakers, although Diana has done her share of that over the years, too. Diana is equally as involved in Beer sem as I am (I don't think I've made a move without having discussed that move at length with her), and Marc E---- hopped on board earlier this semester, and has been in on much of the decision making. Diana and I are hoping that he can take over more of the beer sem responsibilities next semester. It looks like Becky might be into helping out, too.

Second: Diana and I have repeatedly begged others to take beer sem over from us. Most people (including you) have flat-out refused, but have still wanted beer sem. They just didn't want to do all of the work involved in keeping it running. The one person who did agree to take it over failed to hold more than 2 or 3 sems in the semester he was running it. He didn't want to do the work he had to do in order to get people to agree to speak. He's still happy to help out with beer-getting and such in a pinch, which is very generous of him.

Third: The fact is, I like hearing about other people's research, and so does Diana, and so does Marc. None of us is happy when there's so much extra chit-chat going on that the listeners (and sometimes the speaker) lose the point of the talk. Diana, Marc and I have had several complaints from several different people who attend beer sem regularly (unlike you), who are sick of the constant interruptions and jokes - including people who have said they'd speak if the atmosphere were more regulated. Beer sem needs a format to work, so Diana and I, with Marc's support, spoke about and agreed upon a format, taking into account input from several regular attendees, and from several formerly regular attendees, who stopped attending because of the reasons addressed by our change (not really a change, but a reassertion of the original guideline by which beer sem was run).

Fourth: Re. "you may not get another chance". We have had several requests to have only one speaker per night. We are slowly polling other students in the program to try to get a sense of how people in general feel about that idea. About a quarter feel relatively strongly that one speaker is better, and the rest claim not to care either way. Most of the "one-speaker-per-night" feeling seems to have stemmed from Wendy's talk, which was long and apparently generated a lot of discussion. Diana and I, having had several bad experiences with the single-speaker format, are mildly against reinstating it. However, we've been considering making the switch anyway. If we do make the switch, there will be no spot left for you to speak in this academic year. By cancelling today, you may indeed have lost your chance for the year. We'll see how things work out. Of course, since you're boycotting beer sem now, I guess us organizer types don't have to worry about that anymore.

Incidentally, the dig about Katherine was unwarranted. She had a meeting with Beck sprung on her at the last second - she couldn't reschedule it, and was not as glib about screwing me and Diana over as you were. She apologized outright, and said it was unavoidable. You don't reschedule Beck. In my opinion (and Diana agrees) an unavoidable academic meeting with a great man in your field is a much better excuse for cancelling than the ones you offered for your cancellation.

chatting portion of the evening is just as important as the presentation portion of the evening, since we're such a fractured department. the only time i get to see some of the people in different areas is at beer sem.

That's what parties and friendships are for. Each beer sem starts with about 15-20 minutes of hanging out and chatting. The next hour or so should consist of about 40 minutes of listening to talks, and 20 minutes of chatting in a fun but also helpful way about the talks. I don't see a problem with that.

i'm offended by your dictatorial attitude and for that reason am boycotting beer sem.

(a) By "your", I assume you mean both me and Diana, and to a lesser extent Marc, since the sem is run by all three of us?

(b) I've been offended by your attitude about just about everything for the past year or two - maybe even three. You've done almost nothing in graduate school (to your credit, you're at least willing to admit that), and you continue to get away with your lax attitude for some reason that I can't fathom (and without naming names, I'm happy to tell you that I'm not alone in feeling that way - by a long shot). You are narcissitic and childish, which the email you sent me today strongly bears out.

It is absolutely no skin off my nose if you're as offended by me as I am by you. I have so little respect for your opinion - particularly the uninformed one you presented in today's email - that receiving a rude childish email from you is more amusing than anything else.

If you don't like the way beer sem is run, then by all means, don't come. The only one who loses is you. I couldn't care less about your attendance, or about your threatened boycott. And I know that I speak not only for myself, but also for Diana when I say that.

man, vindictive much?
okay, so here's becky's response to jen's email, which i forwarded to her because i'd heard that she'd been less-than-impressed with jen's running of beer sem, as well.

OH......MY......GOD!!! This is the most serious bitch session I've ever heard. You were at least polite and professional about your complaints! I can't believe she got so personal!

Ok, marc (whose opinion/role is not accurately represented here, I am certain) and I will have to take over Beer Sem asap, clearly. This is out of control. It is time for a beer sem coup! Down w/ the dictator! Up w/ the people (aka the chit-chatters!).

That sucks, I hate having enemies...

Becky

with jen and the whole heather thing, i'm feeling a little bit unliked today...