Department member forwarded complaint about professor to that professor I am an undergraduate at a US college. I wanted to take a course in a specific area of my major so that I could do better research during the summer. I do not have the prerequisite courses but I have extensive industry experience in this area so they are much less relevant. The course instructor (A) was ok with allowing me. I tried to respectfully ask permission from the department undergraduate advisor (B) but he refused permission right away and wasn't interested in what I had to say. 

In a last-ditch attempt to be able to take the course, I emailed a higher-ranking professor (C) in the department explaining the issue and asking if she could help. This professor (C) forwarded my email to the original advisor B, who immediately sent me a nasty email saying that I don't dare ask someone else after I asked him. 

While I can understand why the advisor reacted this way, why would a department member forward an email explaining a problem between a professor and student to the professor? I cannot wrap my head around it. Is this normal behavior for academic faculty?
While I can understand why the advisor reacted this way, why would a department member forward an email explaining a problem between a professor and student to the professor?


Is it the senior professor's formal task to handle complaints about or escalations from the advisor?

If yes, the senior professor indeed acted fairly unprofessionally, although it is a reality that in most cases the person that you complained about will learn about who complained about them as a matter of practicality (see some other answers for why this is).

If no, then, well, I am not sure what you thought would happen. Then you sent a random (presumably busy) senior person a mail about an issue that is in no way relevant to their tasks, and they did the only thing that makes sense from their perspective: glance the mail and forward to the person who is actually in charge for the request.

Look, I get that the first instinct when you get an unsatisfying decision is that you "would like to talk to the manager", but this is not how academia (or, really, any business) works. Department administrators delegate specific types of decisions to individual faculty members so that they don't have to deal with them one-by-one anymore. This is arguably not helped by the fact that faculty in academia tend to be very wary to step onto each other's toes. Hence, you will need to work with the undergrad advisor on these issues, even if you don't care for him much.