Boundaries, Transgressions
by Seth Rogoff

When I joined the online faculty meeting a few minutes late, thirty or forty of my colleagues were already logged in and listening to the dean making nervous, over-caffeinated small talk before he formally commenced what was sure to be a pointless, tedious hour. The online version of these meetings was, on the whole, even more monological and irritating than its pre-pandemic predecessor. On the other hand, it was now easy enough to cut one’s video feed and do other things, or simply to fade away into a blissful state of non-thought while the dean, or some other administrator, droned on about college policies or, worse, tried to pat us on the back for doing our “part” to “avert a crisis.”