That's an email that I was sent yesterday. It was sent to me because of my final grades from the Spring 2016 semester.
I can't apply for the award. Two of the four professors that I had during that semester falsely accused me of harassment and inappropriate behavior. Even though their claims were proven false, and I had an A in each of their classes, those are two references which I can't ask for or obtain.
I am fortunate that grants have covered all of my school costs so far, other than the $600 that I had to pay the school when I left after starting a class this past summer. At that time, the student who had harassed me, stalked me and then lied about me to the administration hadn't been confronted by the school. The professor who had tolerated his behavior in class and who had failed me for her class in retaliation against me for my having asked her and then her supervisor and then the administration to tell him to stop harassing and stalking me hadn't yet been proven to be retaliatory; it took all summer for my grade appeal to be finalized so that my grade was restored to the A that I had earned. Not only did I feel helpless to stop harassment by other students, I felt that my academic career could be jeopardized if I reported anyone else for harassment and that my academic career definitely would be jeopardized if there was a verbal conflict between me and a harassing student. I felt that there was nothing else that I could do but not to attend school for the summer or the fall of 2016.
I don't know if I would have started to attend school again this semester, if the student who had continued not to be confronted by the school hadn't started to harass me online in September 2016, using his full name, and if I hadn't then had proof that the administration couldn't continue to refuse to acknowledge. Until then, the school had refused to acknowledge even knowing who he was, saying that I had failed to identify him by description from a class of fewer than 20 people, in which he was the only person who could be whom I had described. When I reported his online harassment to the administration in September 2016, the school finally told me that "the identified student" would be accountable for his actions. That's all I was told, and it hasn't stopped the rumors around school that I was at fault, and it hasn't stopped my being harassed by other students.
It's not as if he didn't know, as so many people have, that abusing me is a low-risk, high-profit endeavor.
Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, March 9, 2017 @ 3:05 p.m.
