"Dear Psych 208 students: Apparently we goofed."
So began psychology professor Barry Jacobs' email to students Tuesday, one day after he inadvertently disclosed every student's midterm, precept and final grades to the entire class.
On Monday, Jacobs attempted to privately inform the students of their individual final grades as well as the overall grade distribution for the course. He failed to delete one of the Excel sheets in the attachment, however, so the email's recipients could view the scores of all 152 students.
"A Princeton professor should be able to handle simple things like this, and if he can't, he shouldn't be here," Sarah Sherman '08, a student in the course, said.
"It was unnerving that all the students in the class could see it," she added. "I was a little embarrassed about my grade."
Jacobs said in his apology that he was "heartbroken" by the mistake and had only attempted to provide students with helpful information.
"[It was a] human error, and I was the human that made the error," he said in an interview. "It was embarrassing and I apologized."
Jacobs sent out the apology letter Tuesday after students notified him of the mistake. In the apology, Jacobs asked his students to delete the email from their files and not to use the information in an "inappropriate manner."
Sherman said that this was not the first time professor Jacobs had made a mistake during the course. "About a quarter of our final exam was completely discounted because the professor accidentally wrote the answers next to the questions," she said. "It was completely unfair."
Other students in the course were not as critical. "I think it was a harmless mix up," Tommi Hurme '08 said. He, like Sherman, viewed the grades included in the attachment and compared himself to his fellow classmates.
"I was surprised at how well I did," he said.
After realizing his mistake, Jacobs contacted psychology chair Deborah Prentice.
Prentice, who said she was not aware of any University policy regarding the posting of grades, said the department used to post grades by Social Security numbers, but eventually stopped this practice. The department never posted grades with names, "that I can remember," she said.
This was not always the University's policy, however.
"As I remember it, grades were posted outside of Alexander Hall," engineering professor David Billington '50 said. Final grades were posted publicly with students' names alongside them, he said.
"Sure some of us were embarrassed," Billington said, but "it never occurred to us that there was something wrong with seeing everyone's grades."
Alyssa Norris '07, however, said that this incident was different from earlier grade posting practices.
"I think that in the past many classes did post grades and names together, but you went into a class knowing that scores would be posted that way," Norris said. "I think the fact that the grades were shared without warning ... is what made some people embarrassed."
But she said Jacobs "handled it [as] best as possible."
Kelsi Goss '08, another student in the course, said she did not think anyone would look through the grades and had not noticed the attachment until she received the apology from Jacobs.
"I'm mainly concerned with doing my best and I try not to compare my work to others," she said. Of her classmates' anxiety, Goss said, "Today, seeing everyone's grades might be a bigger deal than in the past because our school has become more competitive with the new grade inflation policy." English professor John Fleming GS '63 has also noticed this "increase in sensitivity" surrounding students' grades. "Grades have become more and more important," he said.
While Fleming said that a student's grades should be a private matter, he also said that too much emphasis has been placed on grades in recent years. Many students have engaged in "grade grubbing," and are too focused on future graduate school prospects to take challenging courses that they might enjoy but might also damage their GPA, he said.
"This is what is wrong with drawing attention to grades," Fleming added.
Billington, too, said that students place more value on their grades now than when he was an undergraduate. He said he has seen many of his students worry excessively about their grades even though they were stellar students.
Ultimately, the grading system deteriorates the bond between professor and student, Fleming said.
"I've never found that the grading and evaluation system is a particularly useful part of education," he said. "Students don't like to be graded and professors don't like to grade them."
— Includes reporting by Princetonian Senior Writer Brett Amelkin.
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