Recently a staff member shared that at Point Park University and select neighboring universities, there is an odd Death in the Family policy. If there is a death of a close loved one in a staff or faculty member’s family, it can get emailed to every other faculty member of the university. 

I tried rationalizing this in my head. What if they are trying to prepare others for a colleague’s sorrow? What if they are trying to cushion the blow of a poorly-timed dead Dad joke? There could be numerous reasons for why this rule exists, but it should be challenged for people’s safety and security in their personal lives. 

When people are aware of another person’s grief, there are typically three responses. The first is to enact pity on the person and excuse every problematic behavior they exhibit. The second is to smother the person in compassion and empathy. The third is to ignore their emotions entirely, and carry on with your day as it was before a close friend or family member passed away. 

In tiny doses, to specify, minuscule doses; all of these practices could potentially help someone. However, the truth is that a peer’s grief is not ours to consume. We are meant to support the people we care about, not live their life for them. 

This current policy allows for insight into another person’s life which is uncomfortable and a breach of privacy. If a staff member wishes to share their loss, then yes, that is okay. It should not be normalized for the entire faculty of Point Park to suddenly be aware of it. 

If a person of this university does not want to care about the loss of a loved one, they should not have too. This policy creates an entire discussion of how desensitization not only emotionally affects students, but the people from whom we receive our education everyday. 

Although this is a small community, there are always going to be people that we do not know. There are staff members everyday who might never interact with people outside of their department, because their job simply does not place that demand. 

Staff and faculty not being overly-involved is not a downside at all, it is the reality of the balance it takes to teach at a university. Professors have a home which they go back to everyday. Their discussion at dinner should not be how a person in the community lost a family member, and how that is genuinely taking a mental toll on them. Individual people need to have the ability to focus on their lives, and help the person who just went through a traumatic event if that is what they want. 

Point Park University, and other universities in Pittsburgh, should discontinue mass emails sharing the death of a loved one to all faculty and staff. There is not a reason that this information should be shared other than to warn people that there is a grieving person on campus. I do not believe anyone would like strangers, acquaintances, or potentially even co-workers to know this information while that person is just trying to make it through, day by day.