Students and alumni of New York University's journalism department received a strange string of emails from their departmental advisor, Cathleen Dullahan, on Tuesday. Everyone who has ever signed up for the NYU journalism Listserv, this writer included, was first forwarded an exchange between Dullahan and her son, John, discussing his essay. It seems that Dullahan and her husband were editing John's assignment, only for him to complete and turn it in by himself. (Props to you, John: making academic integrity cool again).
Dullahan then sent John an edited version of the essay, saying "you need to use my version. It's perfect." She even suggests that he tell the teacher that he sent the wrong copy by mistake, since he had already turned it in. But in trying to sell her son on lying to his teacher, Dullahan mistakenly revealed her son's additional essay help to hundreds of students and journalists. One of those journalists was Racked's Rebecca Jennings, who promptly posted the exchange on Twitter
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Ten minutes after the first email was sent out, Dullahan sent out two more emails, telling everyone to disregard the first message. But the damage was done.
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For some NYU students, like junior Alex Bazeley, the email fiasco didn't seem too out of the ordinary for Dullahan.
"I thought the reply-all was incredible," Bazeley said. "it was so on-brand for Cathleen. And to be honest, I can't say I never asked my parents for help editing something when I was in high school. Anyone who says they haven't is lying."
But others, like NYU student Olivia Roos, were upset to find out their academic advisor was helping her son write his assignments.
"It's funny that this woman that is meant that push us to work hard and achieve is the driving force behind her son's achievements, it seems." Roos said. "I don't think everyone needs to know Cathleen's personal mother-son dilemma, but I do think the entire situation was sloppy and highly irresponsible. This is the woman in charge of our academics."
Teen Vogue reached out to Dullahan and her son but at the time of publishing had not yet heard back.
For some students, the accidentally sent emails do raise questions about Dullahan's approach to academic integrity, especially since NYU Journalism's Ethics Handbook explicitly prohibits "using or attempting to use unauthorized assistance, material, or study aids in examinations or other academic exercises." It's unknown whether John's school (he is not an NYU student) has similar standards or if the extra help from his parents would be considered cheating. Nonetheless, telling your kid to lie to a teacher is still a bad look if you work at a university.
Not everyone is up in arms over the emails, though. Some journalism students, like James Manso, did not find the Dullahans' emails to be of particular interest.
"I didn't really have a strong reaction to it," Manso said. "It's summer, and I'm more concerned with self-care than whether or not Cathleen is helping her son with his paper. However, I will say that I doubt that every single person who views this as a big deal wouldn't think about doing the same thing in Cathleen's son's shoes. I can't think that every single student critical of the situation wouldn't think about using a resource like that if they had one in their immediate family."
Even if neither Dullahan nor John end up in hot water over, it's still embarrassing for everyone involved. And it adds another incident to the list of NYU's noteworthy tech mishaps: There was the 2012 "replyallcalypse," when a student accidentally started an email thread among all 40,000 students at the university, and just last week The Intercept reported that the university accidentally stored classified military documents on one of its public servers.
So lesson learned: if you're going to ask your parent to help edit your work for class, maybe send it to their personal email address, just in case.
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