Investigation Reveals Eagan Appointments Hosted by Dog
After an extensive investigation into the appointments of Charles Eagan, the University of Colorado Boulder released its findings today, confirming that Eagan’s dog, Chaco, has been hosting the majority of Eagan’s appointments since at least May of 2020. “We want to be clear,” said Lily Board, Assistant Dean for Academic Advising & Student Success in the College of Arts & Sciences, “that, while we do not condone this behavior, Chaco has consistently received positive feedback and students report having a good advising experience overall.”
Officials first became aware that something was unusual with Eagan’s appointments during the Conference for Student Success & Advising awards process. Eagan, an Academic Advisor for Psychology & Neuroscience, was nominated for Most Outstanding New Advisor. Unlike other nominees, all of Eagan’s nomination letters came from students. “I immediately started hearing from members of the awards review committee that Charles’s nomination letters all had some pretty odd comments in them, “ said Dana Parcher, Program Director for Advisor Training & Development. “Nominators would talk about how happy they felt when they met with Charles, or how they left those meetings feeling overcome with relief and joy, and then they would remark on his ‘adorable grin,’ ‘cute little scarf,’ ‘cute little ears,’ ‘cute little paws,’ and make other similarly suspicious comments.”
Investigators compared nominators’ names to contact logs in Buff Portal Advising, and what they found was shocking. “It was absolute nonsense,” said Laura Bonney, Client Success Consultant with the Office of Information Technology, “and I don’t mean that the sentences were incoherent or something. They weren’t even sentences! It was as if someone had just pounded their little fists against the keyboard while typing up the logs.” The investigation team then began interviewing Eagan’s students, nearly all of whom were surprised and confused to learn that they had not been meeting with Charles at all and that Charles was, in fact, a human.
Students quickly asked to be reassigned to Chaco, which has brought to light a number of complicated issues that university officials are currently exploring. These issues include whether BPA has the ability to assign students to non-payrolled, non-human advisors; a review of the ethics of having unpaid animal professionals on staff; further definition of CSSA award eligibility criteria; and where to find adorable, animal-sized headsets in order to better facilitate these Zoom appointments.
