A huge double standard

I probably shouldn't talk about this in a public forum, but since it's been an ongoing problem that everybody else has swept under the rug, I'm going to bring it out into the light.  This even ties into yesterday's post about who I would or would not hire, because this person is the first on my "no way in hell" list of classmates that I would be willing to work with after graduation.

Remember last September, when my best friend, Sarah got sick, and ended up in the hospital with sepsis and pneumonia?  The administrators at school told her that since she had missed too much classtime, that she would have to withdraw from our class, and repeat her 2nd year next year.  The magical cut off of how much time is too much to miss is 2 weeks.  If I remember, they told her this before she had reached 2 weeks of missed classes.  She originally got sick, missed class on Friday, was hospitalized the entire next week, and was told she would have to repeat that following Wednesday.

What does that have to do with anything?  Well, there's another girl in our class, who for the sake of keeping her anonymous, I'll refer to her as Ginny Forest.  Ginny skips class all the time.  Last semester, we had a series of early morning Necropsy Labs, where two groups at a time came in and got to practice doing a necropsy.  Ginny skipped her groups necropsy lab, but was supposed to make it up during my group's lab.  The lab started at 8 am.  She comes waltzing in at 8:30, with no explanation.  One of my other friends is in a PBL group with Ginny Forest this semester.  This friend tells me that Ginny has already missed 4 PBL sessions.  Another friend tells me that she skipped her Hills Wellness Center rotation, with no explanation to the rest of the group.  Just decided not to show up.  There have been a few times when I've been walking to my next class, only to see her just pulling up and getting out of her car 2 hours after class was supposed to have started.  Now, I have no idea how many classes altogether she's missed, but this has been a chronic problem with her, and I'd bet if you added it all up, that it would amount to way more than 2 weeks worth.

To make things worse, about once or twice per month, either in class, or in the anatomy lab, I look over to see that she's in tears about something or other.  It's gotten to the point to where we look over, and roll our eyes because Ms. Forest is crying yet again.

Where am I going with this?  I'm pretty sure she's gotten away with missing as much class as she has, because she went through a family tragedy first semester of first year, and people cut her slack.  I'm pretty sure she's been milking that, and crying her way out of getting called on her BS, and she's been getting away with it.

Anyway, this all leads up to this week.  Tuesday, for a fun epidemiology lesson, our epidemiology faculty decided to have us watch the movie "And the Band Played On." (Quick aside - it covers the scientists at the CDC working the AIDS epidemic in the early 80's.  I thought it was a pretty amazing movie.)  Anyway, the movie is about 3 hours, and class is only 2.  Tuesdays, and Thursdays, our class is divided into halves.  One half has their BSL lab from 8-10, and then anatomy lab from 10-12, and the other half is the opposite.  So we get to BSL today at 8 am to finish watching the movie.

And we sit there.  And we wait.  Then our faculty members announce that a certain person had missed (skipped?) class on Tuesday, and asked to borrow the movie, so she could catch up.  They agreed, with the stipulation that she had the DVD back by today at 8.  We proceed to have an epidemiology discussion for about an hour.  Around 9, a classmate announces that she got a hold of Ms. Forest of the phone, who says she'll be there in about 30 minutes.  Which is 30 minutes before class ends, and not enough time to finish watching the movie.

Another classmate runs down to the anatomy lab, to ask the anatomists if it's ok if we cram all 95 of our class into the lab for the next hour, so we can all finish the movie.  They say it's ok.  So we head to anatomy, where now it's way too crowded and loud to really accomplish anything.  I tried to read histology, but couldn't focus over the noise.

At 10, we traipse back over to our BSL lab to finish watching the movie.  Nothing is said about Ginny and her inconveniencing the entire class.  She's not there to apologize to the 50 of us she just screwed over.  Not only did she make us wake up early to be in class by 8 for something that wouldn't happen until 10, she also managed to screw us out of a useful 2 hours of anatomy.  As a result, now I have to find 2 hours somewhere this week or this weekend where I can go to the lab to make up for the missed time.

I'm annoyed about today.  I feel like she owes us all an apology, since she wasted everybody's time.  She also wasted everybody's tuition money.  We end up paying about $120 dollars for every hour we're in class.  If she wasted 45 people's time for 2 hours, that means she just caused just over $10,000 of wasted tuition.

And yet, she'll probably get away with it.  Because she'll cry her way out of it.

Honestly, if I were Sarah, and I got kicked out for having the audacity to get sick, but Ginny Forest continues to be able to skip classes and cost everybody money with impunity, I would be pissed beyond all belief at the unequal treatment, and maybe even consider a wrongful dismissal suit to cover a year's of lost salary + the compounded interest that's building up on her student loans.  Good thing Sarah's much nicer than I am.

As it stands, if nothing's done after today's incident, I am going to lose a lot of respect for the administration.  I really hope somebody finally stands up to her manipulative tears.