This is the email that I sent to the Dean of Students and the Director of Student Services at Bunker Hill Community College on July 4, 2017:
From: Lena Kochman
Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2017 11:06 AM
To: Julie Elkins
Cc: Kevin J Stevens
Subject: Why would I be a student if all I wanted to do were to make people miserable?
Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2017 11:06 AM
To: Julie Elkins
Cc: Kevin J Stevens
Subject: Why would I be a student if all I wanted to do were to make people miserable?
Dean Elkins,
I won't attend the academic execution that you have scheduled for me on July 5, 2017. Everything that you have charged me with is false, and I have no reason to believe that the conference will be anything other than a formality before you throw me out of school, or impose restrictions on me that are humiliating and that make me vulnerable to being harassed by anyone who wants to then lie to the administration and say that I'm crazy, until you feel that you have enough "evidence" to throw me out.
As I have said in previous emails to you, the only reason that I wrote the email to the class on June 20, 2017 was that I didn't know that Ms. Dottin wasn't at school on June 19, 2017, when I sent her what I had meant to be an informative email about the situation that had developed in my French class. Although Professor Palix-Robasson offered to have me speak with Jean at the end of class on June 19, 2017, I felt that the situation was already out of control, with some of the other students thinking it was funny to cough at me, and although I felt that Professor Palix-Robasson was sincere about her offer of help then, I thought that I should at least make Ms. Dottin aware of the situation. I told Professor Palix-Robasson that I was writing the June 19, 2017 email to Ms. Dottin; Professor Palix-Robasson was even at the Language Lab while I was writing it, and I sent her a copy of it. I sent the first email to Ms. Dottin, copying it to Professor Palix-Robasson, on Monday, June 19, 2017, at 1:10 p.m. The French class is on Monday and Wednesday from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
When I checked my school email on Tuesday morning, June 20, 2017, I saw that there was no answer from Ms. Dottin. Since Ms. Dottin had at one time stopped answering my emails without explanation during the Spring 2017 semester, I didn't know if there would be any response to my concerns from the school administration before Wednesday, June 21, 2017, which was the next day of class. In every previous semester when a situation like this has developed, which is NOT in the majority of my classes at Bunker Hill, the situation has always escalated very quickly once it begins. Students who really want to persist in harassing me are impervious to every polite request that they stop disrupting the classroom; all they do is laugh, say that they're not doing anything, and cough more loudly and more frequently. Although Professor Palix-Robasson had agreed during my conversations with her on Monday that she would talk to the class first thing on Wednesday morning about people needing to be respectful to each other, I was concerned that what she said might not be respected by all of the students. That is why I took the risk of sending an email to everyone in the class on Tuesday at 10:35 a.m. I also sent copies of the email to Ms. Dottin and Professor Palix-Robasson. There was nothing about the email that was secretive or coercive, nor did I want there to be.
Nobody in the class was scared of me on Wednesday morning; Professor Palix-Robasson openly laughed at me, before Jean walked into the room at 9:30 a.m., an hour after class started. He then said that you, Dean Elkins, had spoken to him and that you had told him that he could only be in class that day to take the midterm and that he would also have to withdraw from the course. As soon as he said that he'd have to withdraw from the class, I said "No, you don't have to do that." I wasn't trying to make your decisions for you; I was saying that I didn't think that he should have to withdraw. Professor Palix-Robasson and I talked at the break and we both agreed that he should stay in the class and that we'd tell you that the issue was resolved and that he also shouldn't have to withdraw.
I studied a lot for this French class; most of the time that I have spent studying during the Summer Session I 2017 was spent studying French, although I am also taking Personal Finance online. I was able to finish the French midterm in class on June 21, 2017 in about 20 minutes. Since the class had an hour to finish it, I gave my test to Professor Palix-Robasson and then I went to your office. Your administrative assistant told me that you weren't there. I asked her if I should write you a paper letter and leave it with her, and she told me that it would be better if I were to send you an email. When I was walking from your office to a computer lab to write the email to you saying that I didn't think that Jean should have to withdraw from the class, I ran into you in the hallway. I asked if you had time to talk, and you said that you had a meeting. I said that I would send you an email, which I did at 11:13 a.m. The email was called "Thank you; please don't remove that student from class," and I don't know why you or anyone else thinks that anything about that email or my behavior in this situation is threatening.
I didn't intimidate anyone in my French class; your removing Jean from the class was what intimidated people. If the people whom you later interviewed lied to you about what happened, it's because they're scared of you, not me.
By the end of class on Wednesday, June 21, 2017, Professor Palix-Robasson and I were cordial. As I have also said to you in previous emails, I went to talk to Ms. Dottin when the French class was over that same afternoon; I walked from class to Ms. Dottin's ofice, per Ms. Dottin's emailed request from June 20, 2017 @ 1:53 p.m. I hadn't read Ms. Dottin's June 20, 2017 email until the morning of June 21, 2017, when I went to school early so that I could check my school email before French class. I had answered Ms. Dottin's June 20, 2017 email at 7:49 a.m. on June 21, 2017, saying that I'd go to Ms. Dottin's office when class was over. I have forwarded you and Director Stevens that email exchange, called "Meeting," this morning. Crossed signals are not a reason to expel anyone; I don't know why you're doing this to me. I did what I could do in the situation, and so did you, and there was no reason for it to blow up the way that it did, and there's no reason for me to be blamed for it in any way.
My meeting with Ms. Dottin after French class on June 21, 2017 was unexpectedly awful. Ms. Dottin, who tends to be a nice person, did not seem at all interested in anything that I was trying to tell her about the positive, final result of my last discussion with Professor Palix-Robasson. The meeting with Ms. Dottin was so bad that I ended it by saying "I hope that the kid doesn't get thrown out of class. Thank you," and then walking out. Again, I have no idea why my concern that a student, who had only needed some advice about how to act in class from someone at the school whom he respected, not be thrown out of class is being construed as dishonest, intimidating or inappropriate in any way.
Contrary to what your June 27, 2017 letter to me, sent via email, said, you did not send me an email on June 22, 2017 telling me not to return to class. I have forwarded to you and to Director Stevens the email that you sent me on June 21, 2017, which was your response to my email "Thank you; please don't remove that student from class." I have also forwarded to you and Director Stevens the June 23, 2017 email that you sent me near the end of the business day on June 23, 2017, which was the first you ever said anything to me about my not returning to class, and in which it couldn't be more clear that you were planning to turn me into the culprit yet again in a situation in which I hadn't done anything wrong. I could already feel that you were going to do that; that's why I had written you an email on June 23, 2017 in the morning, saying that I would not go back to class even though you hadn't yet told me to do that.
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Here's a quote from the June 23, 2017 email that I sent you at 9:39 a.m.:
Nobody can argue with the grades that I have in that class, or in the other class that I'm taking this semester. I also haven't been inappropriate at any time in that class or in any other class that I have taken at BHCC. I'm sorry that I didn't realize that Dean Elkins wanted to meet with me. Even if I had known that she wanted to schedule a meeting with me, I wouldn't have been able to be at the school at 3:00 p.m. anyway, since the bed lottery at the shelter is at 3:45 p.m. every day of the week.
My assumption is that the school has once again decided that I'm the problem when I'm not. Since it seems unlikely that this situation will resolve before the weekend, and since Dean Elkins told me in her email from Wednesday afternoon not to contact Professor Palix-Robasson or anyone else in the class until I'd had a chance to talk to Dean Elkins, I'll assume that the school would rather that I not be in class on Monday. I will do my homework for the class, and hopefully the situation will be resolved for my being able to be in class on Wednesday, although I know that's the school's decision.
Here's a quote from the June 23, 2017 email that you sent me at 4:59 p.m.:
Lena,
I called the number you provided to the College, 617-955-5282, twice on Thursday, and twice on Friday, June 23, 2017 (3:30pm- 4:49pm) and left a message for you to call. I understand that you have limited access to email. If there is a better number to reach you please share that with me. I can be reached by phone over the weekend at 617-228-2436.
I am glad that you received my email asking you not to contact your classmates or professor stated that you would comply and that you would not go to class on Monday. I can meet with you on Monday (June 26, 2017) at am to talk about the series of events in your French 101 class at my office located at the Charlestown Campus, B building room 309. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Julie Elkins,Ed.D.
Here's a quote from the June 24, 2017 email that I sent you at 4:39 p.m. The email was called "I don't deserve to be thrown out of school," because I don't:
Essentially, you first tried to call me when it was almost time for the bed lottery at the Pine Street Inn; I wasn't sure who was calling me, so I let it go to voicemail, but I could not have had a conversation with you at that time anyway. Contrary to what most people probably think homelessness is like, it is highly regimented; everyone gets up at 6:00 a.m. every day, including the weekends, and the bed lottery is at 3:45 p.m. every day and can last until 5:00 p.m. Curfew is at 7:00 p.m. every day, including the weekends. It requires a lot of organization to be homeless; I feel like I should make that point now.
When you called the second time, I thought it might be you, and I didn't pick up the phone because I COULD NOT face another conversation like the one that I had when I was first in your office last year, in which I was accused of not knowing how to behave appropriately in a classroom setting or not being able to behave appropriately in a classroom setting due to age, mental illness, or homelessness. I couldn't even face the possibility of having another conversation like that, because that's not what happened then, and it's not what's happening now.
I also had not expected you to call me personally; I thought Sartreina might call me again. I don't tend to tell people that calling me is the best way to contact me and then not pick up the phone.
This is another quote from the June 24, 2017 email that I sent you at 4:39 p.m.:
Dean Elkins,
I have just sent you several voice recordings of pages from the French textbook. I did all of them this morning. None of them were assigned to the class by the teacher; I did them to try to save my academic career, which seems yet again to be in jeopardy for no reason.
I'm sorry that I didn't have time to try to download them to a computer and send them all in one email as attachments, although I don't know if they all would have transmitted as attachments anyway.
Also today, I sent you certified mail with all of the work that I have done for that class this semester. It includes the written assignments, which are typed and graded, the tests that we have taken so far, which are written on notebook paper because they were translations that we did in class, and all of the workbook pages for Chapters 1-4, which are also all of the chapters that are covered by the class during the duration of the course. I finished the workbook pages for Chapter 3 and I also did all of Chapter 4 last night and today. I have done almost all of the workbook pages for each chapter, including 1 and 2, although most of them were also not assigned by the teacher. Usually, we are assigned 2 or 3 exercises per class.
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I'd rather not continue to forward you emails that you have already written or read; I know how much you don't like receiving information from me that you think of as irrelevant clutter.
I didn't photocopy the written work that I sent to you via certified mail. If you insist on destroying my academic career at Bunker Hill, I won't have any hard evidence to present to another college about the work that I did for my French class.
I did all of that work and sent it to you because I hoped that I'd be able to finish the requirements for the class without having to return to class. Although I knew that I hadn't done anything wrong, I realized from the emails that you were sending me that all of my diplomacy in the classroom and all of my efforts to resolve the situation without it blowing up, which were successful by the end of class on Wednesday, June 21, 2017, had already been ruined by Ms. Dottin's behavior toward me in my meeting with her after class on June 21 2017 and your reaction to the email that I had sent to all of the students on the morning of June 20, 2017 when I didn't know if anyone was going to help stop what was happening in class.
I don't go to class to fight with people or to try to push them around. I don't know why you insist on trying to characterize me that way; it couldn't be less true.
It is past the add/drop deadline, and it is past the withdrawal deadline. I have no reason to think that the conference which you scheduled for tomorrow will be anything other than a degrading and accusatory process in which everything that I say in my own defense is discounted and I am treated, at best, as if I have no awareness of how my behavior affects other people. You are fortunate not to have a psychiatric history that makes people feel justified in abusing you and then treating you as if you're imagining the abuse, so that they never have to take responsibility for their actions. I am sorry that I asked Dean Catallozzi to talk to the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission in March of 2017. I'm sorry that I trusted the school with the information that I had exercised my right as someone who receives $783.40/month in Social Security benefits to try to access employment services that are supposed to be available to Social Security recipients through Mass Rehab. I probably could have begun to receive Social Security in 1992, at the age of 18, when I was first hospitalized at my own request, but I didn't. I never applied for Social Security before 2013, after having spent my entire adult life being so discriminated against for having a psychiatric history that I haven't had a life to speak of at all, even by the age of 43, which I'll be in a couple of weeks.
I'm sorry that, in March 2017, I asked Dean Catallozzi to confirm to Mass Rehab that Bunker Hill had eventually decided that I wasn't at fault for what happened at the school in 2016. I approached Mass Rehab at the end of the 2016 summer, when I received my letter from the "Ticket To Work" program that the government sends to Social Security recipients. Mass Rehab refused to work with me to help me gain appropriate employment, because of the hateblogs that people have published about me online and because of what I told Mass Rehab about my having left school for the summer and fall of 2016; everything that I told Mass Rehab was treated as if it were a result of my being mentally ill. I'm sorry that Dean Catallozzi felt that she had to ask someone else at the school about whether she could tell Mass Rehab that the 2016 situation wasn't my fault. It seems to me that the school is now exploiting my having trusted the school with the information that I am a Social Security recipient and that I was rejected for appropriate employment through Mass Rehab to excuse the school's failure to prevent my having been harassed and lied about during every semester when I've been a student at Bunker Hill so far. The only thing that Ms. Dottin wanted to know during my meeting with her on June 21, 2017 was whether or not I've been prescribed psychiatric medication; she steered the entire conversation toward that question, and it seems to me that my not inappropriately expressed offense at her invasiveness and her lack of respect for my boundaries is part of why the school is mistreating me now.
I had voluntarily given the information to Mass Rehab that people have published hateblogs about me that show up from a Google search of my name. The reason that I had tried to access services at Mass Rehab was that I knew that the hateblogs would make it difficult for me to get a job without support. I have tried to get the hateblogs removed in the past; most of the websites that host them refuse to dismantle them.
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This is a quote from one of the hateblogs. It is the first paragraph of the first page of the first Google search result for "lena kochman":
Lena Kochman✡ is a batshit crazy YouTube vlogger and blogger from Boston who is constantly videotaping everyone to prove that she is a victim of nonstop "gang stalking," surveillence, rape, abuse, harassment over the smell of her vagina, male dominance, and forced pornography. She is targetted by the post office, Google, janitors, security guards, and politicans, but most of all a shadowy organization she calls The Conglomerate that sends messages through license plates. Though the lulz are strong, what makes Lena such a human treasure is that, as this mentally ill woman decodes the imaginary voices in her head and delusions brought on by untreated paranoid schizophrenia, Lena is almost entireley indistinguisable from your typical outraged feminist.
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I had also voluntarily given the information to Mass Rehab about what had happened at school in 2016.
I know that what people say about me online would make any employer not want to hire me, not even to work as a cashier. I had hoped to be working part-time while also attending school full-time during the Spring 2016 semester, but that didn't happen.
Mass Rehab refused to make appropriate placement options with employers with whom it has working relationships available to me. Although I provided Mass Rehab with pictures of my grades from the Spring 2016 semester, which constituted almost a perfect grade point average, and although Mass Rehab didn't dispute the above-average work that I did for the 2 separate work assessments that Mass Rehab requested that I do as proof that I was employable, and during which it was documented there were no interpersonal problems at all between me and other people, Mass Rehab told me, in writing, that my goal of working in biotechnology was "unrealistic," and that the only work of which I was capable was of working part-time in a dish room with a personal supervisor in case I freaked out when someone coughed at me. "In a dish room" was written in bold print. I felt that this evaluation of my abilities was inaccurate, and I said so, and I was answered with "See, Lena, this is how you are," at which point I got up and walked out, since there was nothing else that I could do. I also received a letter from Mass Rehab saying that I'd had "significant difficulty understanding" what Mass Rehab was told me and that I "didn't want" to be employed, and none of that was true. I knew exactly what they were doing, and they didn't like my telling them that I did, and if I hadn't wanted to be employed I wouldn't have contacted them or done everything that they asked me to do for 4 months, hoping that the result would be paid work that's appropriate to my experience and ability. I wasn't asking to be a CEO; all I said was that I'd like to be a dietary aide in a nursing home. I don't have a problem with old people; having been hospitalized so many times during my life, I've met a lot of them and there are also, sadly, a lot of them in homeless shelters. I even had told Mass Rehab that I knew that employers at a nursing home would be concerned about the videos online of my yelling at people who have stalked me in their vehicles, so I said that I'd be happy to do some temporary work for employers with whom Mass Rehab also has working relationships, to prove that I could work with other people before asking to be supported by Mass Rehab in an application for work at a nursing home where Mass Rehab has helped to place other Mass Rehab clients for employment.
I'm sorry that Dean Catallozzi told me that she couldn't tell Mass Rehab that the student from Chinese class really had harassed me or that the Chinese professor had been recognized by the school as not having told the truth about what had happened.
It also seems to me that Bunker Hill is exploiting what I had told several people at the school during the Spring 2017 semester about my being in an abusive situation where I lived and my subsequent homelessness. The professors for all of my classes at Bunker Hill during the Spring 2017 semester were supportive and kind about the little that I told them about what was happening to me outside of school. I wish that I could say the same at this point for Ms. Dottin and the person to whom she referred me for help with my housing situation in May 2017. At her advice, I dropped off a lot of written information to someone at the school whom I'd never met before, Kathleen O'Neill. I still haven't met her; soon after I left the information for her without someone at her office, she called and left me a harsh-sounding voicemail, telling me that I had to go back to the school that day in person or she "couldn't help me." I couldn't meet with her that day; I answered her voicemail by calling her and leaving a voicemail saying that she could call me and tell me what time she wanted me to be there on another day, and I would be there. She never called me again. I hadn't really had hope that she could help me; there were only a few days left until I knew that I'd have to leave the apartment that I had from March 2016 to the end of May 2017.
I was not at fault for losing my apartment, either. I paid my rent and utilities on time every month, maintained the apartment, and didn't do anything to anyone. I have sent you and Director Stevens a picture of it. Unfortunately, being a Section 8 tenant or otherwise poor makes people vulnerable to being abused almost anywhere, and my notoriety doesn't help. This particular apartment was, by law, an affordable housing unit in a market-rate building. I was able to rent it with my Section 8 voucher through a program called the Inclusionary Housing Program, which helps low income people to get apartments in nice buildings because of the ordinance in Cambridge that a certain percentage of new market-rate buildings have to be rented to low-income tenants. The market rate for an apartment like that in that building is $2400 plus utilities; the contract price that the property management has to accept for its low income tenants in similar studio apartments is less than $1000. Most of that was paid for by the voucher; I'm paying as much for my storage unit now as I was paying for my portion of the rent, although now I don't have to pay utilities. I loved the apartment; I never would have jeopardized it with lies or crazy behavior, but I wasn't willing to be victimized and there is no social system that didn't fail to help me. Money is money; you can't fight it if you don't have it. People are abused for being poor everywhere in the world.
My being abused over and over in many situations is not a reason to treat me as if I'm crazy or the source of my own problems. My disclosing personal information to the school of my own volition at times when I have needed whatever help was available should not be used against me.
Ms. Dottin's unkindness toward me on July 21, 2017 was out of character for her; if it hadn't been, I would have requested that you assign me to another advisor at Bunker Hill. As you know from my subsequent emails to you, I wasn't unwilling for her to call me again, although I certainly wouldn't have consented to be grilled about my medical information while being treated as if I were the problem in my French class.
The problem in my French class is that the school has failed for three semesters in a row to PREVENT my being harassed by someone or by a few people. I appreciate and am grateful for the school's prompt response to my concerns about my math class in the Spring 2016 semester, and I said that to everyone who supported me for that. I did not expect that the school would attack me again about being the target of harassment again.
I hope that you'll drop the charges against me, but if you don't, then it doesn't seem to me that there's anything that I can do about this situation. It seems as if even if I withdraw of my own accord, not only will I owe the school thousands of dollars that I don't have, but I'll fail every class which I haven't already finished for the Summer I Session and the Spring 2016 semester. It will be impossible for me to transfer to another school.
As I have said, I applied to be a student at Bunker Hill Community College because that was where I wanted to be a student; it has the program that I want to study. I have liked most of my classes and have had no or few problems with most of my professors and other students in class.
Lena Kochman
Copyright L. Kochman, July 11, 2017 @ 1:57 p.m.