MBA News: Misguided Wharton Student Takes on Vice-Dean Over Ski-Trip
January 22nd, 2010
Every once in a while we all learn the dangers of putting our thoughts down in an easily forwardable email. We would guess that an unnamed Wharton student now regrets his rather over the top response to Vice Dean, Anjani Jain’s email, wherein the Vice-Dean expresses concern about students skipping class to go skiing.
It seems that Wharton students planned a ski trip which would require many to miss classes on a Thursday. Wharton’s Vice-Dean diplomatically laments that students have put leisure ahead of academics and grudgingly accepts that there is little that he can do about this year’s trip, but that he will be making sure that academics take priority in the future — for fear that the Wharton brand could be damaged by a “leisure-first” stereotype (to paraphrase).
In a lengthy email response, a student with an axe to grind, takes on everything from professor salaries to the reputation of U-Penn to the motivations of students who are not going on the trip. The student mentions that he would be unashamed if news of the ski-trip made the Wall Street Journal, but one has to wonder if he would have expressed the same sentiments about his own email reaching the paper. In the meantime, his email is being blogged about and was discussed in Dealbreaker — probably a lot more than he had expected and that the school would want.
Posted in News, University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
