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This chapter explores the ever-growing problem of uncivil electronic discourse directed by students at faculty in higher education. After providing a definition of uncivil discourse, the authors explore potential influences on the rapid increase in uncivil digital communication, among them the nature of technology, different definitions of politeness, and the nature of higher education. The chapter next surveys the various factors (e.g., age, familiarity with technology, gender, mental state, personality, and professorial teaching style) that add to the likelihood that students may engage in uncivil electronic discourse before detailing the many effects of such communication, including stress, cynicism, lower standards, student suffering, and physical violence. The chapter concludes with possible remedies: proactive problem-focused coping strategies for faculty and administrators (e.g., detailed syllabi, published campus standards for student and employee behavior, and training for faculty, students, and staff on issues of incivility); reactive problem-focused coping strategies for faculty; and emotion-based coping strategies for faculty.

Universities are increasing hubs of digital activity; much commendable, some reprehensible. It is dismaying that in some learners' minds the divide between them is murky rather than clear. Today's students are largely digital natives born into computing and its venues. In many colleges, during orientation the preponderance of incoming students use their new college e-mail accounts to enable in Facebook, etc., easy online communication with others in the institution. Unlike past decades when a student might be handed flyers or read postings on poles and walls, today's students are in a maelstrom of social media, and other new technologies that students are socially pressed to use. In her book Ruling the Waves, Debora Spar suggested that cyberspace is like a frontier town, a place where there are “not a lot of rules or marshals in town” (Spar, 2001). People online often feel relatively unconstrained, creative, and innovative. At the same time, chaos, disorder, nefariousness, and just plain “bad behavior” are rife. New technologies foster the sense of a new normality. Yet just because it is now possible to act in new ways through new technologies does not make those ways acceptable.

Angela Baldasare, Ph.D. currently serves as the divisional manager for assessment and research in the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs. Working in the public health sector over the past 8 years, she has overseen the evaluation of more than 150 programs, addressing issues of sexual health and teen pregnancy, domestic violence, child welfare, substance abuse, mental health, and disability.