A Shocking Revelation Students Should NOT Miss 

By: Sidney Mansueto

Credit: commons.wikimedia.org

The College of Staten Island is best known for its great educational offerings and history as a mental institution before reestablishing it as a school, but that’s not all the four-year public college is known for. 

A bomb was dropped last Tuesday by President Dr. William J. Fritz: The school’s professors are actually members of the secret service. The news comes just days after the college announced that it would cease all in-person lectures, and proceed into distance learning in response to the Coronavirus outbreak. 

A new routine isn’t the only adaptation students will be struggling to make this spring. Some students feel like their professors are meant to be “protectors, listeners, and educators” instead of privacy invaders. 

Speaking of privacy, there is not much of it between the instructor and the student. A spokesperson for the College of Staten Island declined to comment. 

It was during the sanitizing period when a janitor walked in on a physics professor speaking into a cell phone and conversing about what sounded like “clandestine, secretive” matters. 

To avoid any anxiety, he ignored the remainder of the conversation to “erase it from his memory”. Still, the janitor’s curiosity stirred. He wanted to get to the bottom of this event- what and with who? The professor kept quiet, and when the conversation ended, he “zoomed” out of the classroom. 

The janitor later addressed his concerns with Fritz, who revealed the shocking news. There was no way this news was going to be kept “top secret” anymore. 

The secret life of professors has always been a point of curiosity to students, but learning that your instructors are members of the secret service is something else. New developments into this story have revealed the professors’ roles as secret service members: keeping an eye on students’ every move, 24/7, and going as far as maintaining a lengthy log of their personal conversations. 

This concerns students, and many feel that this is an invasion of privacy. One professor who teaches advanced statistics, was found to be journaling multiple entries of students’ personal social media activity, analyzing confidential data such as a student’s search history. 

Keeping such a log is a deep look into the off-campus lives of many students. The CSI community is angered to learn of these findings, and wish to have their privacy protected. One parent of a CSI student feels that these violations “make bad character” for their children’s instructor.