BERKELEY, Calif. — With graduation approaching, many seniors have been emailing their advisors to make sure they are able to officially graduate on time. However, instead of receiving the typical delay-in-response email explaining that something else is more of a priority than them, many students have reported that it is taking days or longer for them to receive their delay-in-response emails.
“I was really confused when I emailed my advisor asking if I’ve taken enough units to graduate and didn’t immediately get an email back saying they appreciate my patience and will get back to me eventually after these busy times,” reported senior Carl Jones. “At first I was like, wow maybe now I’m actually the priority, but I was wrong. Three days later I received a delay in response email which not only thanked me for my patience during these busy times but also thanked me for my patience for waiting for the delay in response message. I swear if they let me know I need to fill out some form a week before graduation and get mad at me for not filling it out sooner I am going to lose my shit.”
Luckily one of the advisors for computer science somehow made time to give a comment about the delay in delay in responses.
“I am so sorry about the delay in delay in responses. The department had an undergraduate student do a URAP project coding all the automatic delay in response emails for us because it was free labor, but their code was full of bugs. I guess this is what we get for building a system based on exploiting students and ASEs for labor in general. Luckily, I am currently working with another URAP student to code an automatic email explaining the delay in delay in response emails. This way students will immediately know that they will eventually get a delay in the response email, and then a few months later if a student comes to office hours saying I never responded, I will be able to point out two emails indicating the delay. While advising is important, making sure I can’t justifiably get accused of not doing my job is even more important to me. I really do want to reply, it’s just tough juggling advising 2000 students even though I do have four other colleagues to help share the load. I wish the university hired more advisors, then I would be able to really give everyone I advise individual attention.”
At press time, Chancellor Christ explained that in order to hire more advisors she would either need to limit the funding going towards research, housing, or lower her own salary. She further explained that all of these options are unacceptable and would go against Berkeley’s values, whereas brutally fighting the system in order to get advice is very much in line with Berkeley culture. Three months ago we reached out asking for a more thorough explanation on her comment, but we have only received a delay in response email so far.