Behind the Brown Door

Faculty doors: more communicative than you might think. The more the door is open, the more the faculty member is willing to talk to you. When the door is wide open, it means come on in, but when it's open just a crack, it means I'm pretty busy and I'd rather not be bothered, but come in if it's really important. When the faculty door is shut, it may be like the house with front light off on Halloween. S/he may be in, but may be pretending not to be in order to avoid students/trick-or-treaters. Of course, it is always OK to knock, but s/he may or may not answer.

Fortunately, many faculty put students first and put down whatever they are doing to talk to students. We are lucky to have a lot of those here. But then there are some others.

Lastly, when in the office, don't shut the door, and open the door if the other closes it without an apparent and good reason. From the faculty member's perspective there is a problem, at best something personal to you, that is going to make him/her uncomfortable, and at worst, provide you an opportunity to do something bad, or maybe the opportunity to later claim that the faculty member did something bad. Much the same applies for the student as well, especially relating to sexual harassment. Don't close the door. For any students reading this, faculty are almost always wearing the white hats, but faculty have the power, and power corrupts. For any faculty reading this, it's 999/1000 that there won't be a problem, but you're going to see a thousand students in your career.