The first week in, and I'm already hearing about students sharing information they hear about in this class outside of this class. Frustration sets in. Five days in, a discussion behind us about how we can't share what we hear in class, and apparently it's been ignored. Hopefully "five days in" just means this was a careless slip, a "oh, I didn't realize THAT'S what you were talking about"-kind of mistake.
If someone wasn't here on a day something interesting is read, the absent person misses out. That's the point of being here--you don't miss out on what goes on in class. But unless YOU specifically wrote whatever was interesting/personal, you don't get to tell people what happened. You aren't the messengers for other people in this class. You don't get to take someone else's story and share it with anyone else. You don't get to say, "so-and-so said this" to anyone else. That's gossip. That's drama. That's how this class will fall apart. That's how this class will ruin itself.
I'm serious. First of all, if no names are said in a writing, don't assume you know who someone is talking about. Assumptions are ridiculous and most often wrong. That's the best way to spread bad blood and chaos. Secondly, these are other people's stories, not yours. You aren't in charge of others' stories, you don't own the right to spread their story. It's THEIR story. If they want it shared, they'll share it. But people in this class share for THIS class only, and, even then, for the people who were there on that day.
This incident is hopefully just a hurdle, a mis-step. But I'm disappointed to hear already that someone assumed a journal was written about someone (it wasn't), then told that person, who then wrote about being written about, which came back to the original writer, and everyone was hurt when no one needed to be.
Sound confusing? It is. Gossip is a vicious circle, and rumors are twisting trenches of disgusting warfare. We're better than this.
Listen in class, but leave it at the door. Next time I hear about this happening, I will ask the person who talked about it to leave the class. And I always know.
