Word of advice: Stop emailing mean stuff and maybe get group therapy.

Over the past six months or so, there’s been some attention paid to some of Hartnell College’s unfortunate inner workings. First was the resignation of President/Superintendent Priscilla Hsieh after less than a year on the job, combined with a big old check, for $225,436.40, that she walked away with for reasons the school refuses to discuss under the guise of confidential personnel matters. Second was the hiring of an interim president/superintendent, Raúl Rodriguez, who earlier this month and after only three months in the job, leveraged his position as a finalist for a job elsewhere into a better deal with Hartnell, including a $45,000-a-year pay increase (to $310,000 a year) and an interim contract through June 2023, making it seem less “interim.”

In Monterey County NOW on Sept. 2, I wrote a piece chronicling the discovery by Hartnell faculty that Vice President of Academic Affairs Cathryn Wilkinson has been a party to faculty emails on two listservs, a type of virtual bulletin board system, on which faculty members openly discussed issues involving various deans and administrators and contract negotiations, among other things. Wilkinson, as alleged in a letter sent to the faculty by faculty union President Christine Svendsen and Academic Senate President Cheryl O’Donnell, and obtained by the Weekly, went to a member of the school’s human resources department and asked to be added to the lists.

At the time. Hartnell spokesperson Scott Faust stated Wilkinson was “inadvertently included on a public group email list used by Hartnell faculty.” And after faculty expressed concern, HR “opted to remove her from the email list,” Faust wrote. Meanwhile, a number of incensed faculty members called for Wilkinson to resign. An overreaction? Probably. But hold that thought.

It’s true Wilkinson was removed from the email list. That she was inadvertently added, not so much. Because in a fresh set of emails also obtained by the Weekly, Rodriguez writes to the union leadership, “The fact that Dr. Wilkinson asked an employee to place her name on the faculty listserv is not in question. By all accounts, Dr. Wilkinson did take this action.” She did so, Rodriguez states, because “of a desire on her part to better comprehend and respond to the concerns of the faculty by understanding what was happening on the faculty listserv.”

In a second email, Rodriguez castigages the union leadership, annoyed they went to the press (the emails, though, came from an anonymous third party) and stated that to accuse Wilkinson of spying and call for her termination “is irresponsible, unprofessional and unwarranted.”

I think it’s totally plausible that Wilkinson sought addition to that list so she could better understand faculty concerns. She joined Hartnell only last December. She also could have asked faculty directly about their concerns, but given there’s a pandemic going on, face-to-face meetings aren’t happening.

And that brings us to Dave Phillips, Hartnell’s vice president of technology, who encouraged Wilkinson to get on the email list in the first place. In yet another email (God, all the emails), Phillips acknowledges to the union leadership he advised her to join the listserv not knowing who was and wasn’t allowed on it. Fair enough.

Then he goes to town. He calls them conspiracy theorists (some faculty found they had emails deleted and didn’t know how it happened), suggests they consult with QAnon and questions their leadership. And he ends with this: “People are dying all around us from a viral pandemic; people of color are being murdered, denied due process, and denied the right to vote by our police, government institutions and politicians; there is rioting in our cities trying to get someone to listen; the state is on fire; many of our students are homeless; a quarter of our student population said they were food-challenged this past year; yet, this is how you choose to spend the power that your position provides? Really? I feel like you should all be embarrassed and ashamed of yourselves.”

I think it would behoove the students most of all if the people running the school would think, long and hard, before they hit send on any emails.

Scott Faust said the school would have no comment for this column.

MARY DUAN writes Local Spin for Monterey County Weekly. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com or follow her at twitter.com/maryrduan