This is an email that I sent to Mr. Stevens, the Director of Student Services, on July 13, 2016: it was one of the many that I sent to the school that summer, asking if they had confronted the student. As I have said, I published all of my email correspondence between me and the male writing teacher who falsely accused me of harassment online last year, and I was also acquitted by the school of having harassed him or anyone else. Anyone who wants to read those emails can, at my YouTube blog, "The railing is too low at the library." The title of that blog is about the railing that's near the children's section of the renovated Boston Public Library in Copley Square; a kid is going to fall over it eventually. Don't say I didn't warn anyone.
Dean Elkins seems to make her decisions about me with Director Stevens. When she scheduled another meeting for me with them in response to what happened in my French class this summer in 2017, I knew it would be a meeting in which they accused me of being the problem, so I told her that I didn't want to attend it unless she could reassure me that it wouldn't be a meeting in which I was yet again falsely accused of having done something wrong. She didn't mention my concern about that in her subsequent letter charging me with 5 counts of misconduct; she only said that I had refused to talk to her.
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What steps are being taken to identify and talk to the main bully from my Chinese class?
To:
Cc:
Attachments:
Mr. Stevens,
I hope that you're having a good summer.
The attachment that I have sent is a picture of the specific instructions for how to do the weekly recordings that Professor Huo gave to her Chinese class at the beginning of the Spring Semester.
I know that there was a lot of information having to do with my case at the school, but I want to try to address why those instructions are significant.
When, after weeks of my attempting to get help getting the harassment that was happening in my Chinese class and, on one occasion, at my place of work at school perpetrated by the main instigator of the harassment, I finally had to leave the class because the situation had deteriorated, and I was sent to the office of Dean Elkins to meet with her and you, I asked that the recorded assignments that I had done every week be graded. I asked that because the only recording that Professor Huo had ever graded was the first one, for which I had gotten a 93. Having spoken to other people in the class, I knew that she wasn't grading other people's work, either, and that a lot of people weren't doing the assignments at all; I knew this because, contrary to the total lies that were told about me by Professor Huo and a few of the other students in her class in retaliation for my having asked that the abuse stop, I AM NOT a social klutz and I had friendly conversations with other people in that class every time that there was class.
I guess that what must have happened when I asked Dean Elkins that the recordings be graded was that Dean Elkins told Professor Huo to grade them, and Professor Huo went back, gave me an 85 for the second one, and then, because Professor Huo had gotten away with all of her other lies about me, she decided to fail me for ALL of the other recordings, saying that the recordings were supposed to be done without listening to her recording and repeating them back.
Professor Huo has also refused, through the informal grading process, to change my grade from the F which I certainly don't deserve to the A which I do deserve. I am having conversations by phone and email with Dean Catallozzi, who has told me that she thinks that I have grounds to file a formal grade appeal.
I realize that the situation was made worse because of Professor Reed's accusations, which were proven false, as were the accusations that I was the one being harassing in my Chinese class. I understand that some of my emails to Professor Reed were not as polite as they probably should have been and that he saved the rude things that he said or did for his classroom, where there was no record of them. I have no resentment toward him, but he was not honest about what our correspondence was like.
I'm mentioning him because, even though the way that I treated Professor Reed was not harassment, some of it wasn't nice. However, I did NOTHING AT ALL TO PROVOKE ANYONE IN MY CHINESE CLASS. It wasn't the same situation; I was truly bullied in that class, and Professor Huo enabled that bullying and vindictively tried to fail me for her class when she thought that her other lies about me were being believed.
I'd like to know what steps are being taken to identify the main, student instigator of the harassment in my Chinese class. Although I don't know his name, I would be able to identify him if I saw his picture. He and the couple of his friends whom he was sometimes able to get to be part of the bullying of me retaliated against my having asked for help not to be subjected to harassing behavior in class and, on one occasion outside the classroom, stalking and harassment by the main instigator.
They are guilty of the following violations of the school's Code of Conduct:
14. Breach of peace; including disorderly, lewd, or indecent conduct, or aiding, abetting, or procuring another person to breach the peace on College premises or at functions sponsored by, or participated in, the college.
17. Acting on or off-campus in a manner that substantially interferes with or disrupts the normal and/or safe operation of the College, including but not limited to disrupting or interfering in the educational process, including teaching, advising, research, administration, disciplinary proceedings, public service or other College activities or functions.
19. Verbal or physical harassment or intimidation.
20. Acts of dishonesty, including:
b. Furnishing false information to any College official, faculty member or office
22. Abuse of the Disciplinary process, including but not limited to:
a. Falsification, distortion, or misrepresentation of information during the judicial process
h. Knowingly filing a false complaint under the Code of Conduct
I know everyone in that Chinese class by sight, although not by name. I could identify everyone who was part of the harassment, everyone who was a bystander, and everyone who was sympathetic to me but who didn't know what to do because Professor Huo was enabling the bullies and punishing me for telling her that it was her responsibility to tell the bullies to leave me alone.
Everything that has happened over the past months about this issue NEVER HAD TO HAPPEN. All Professor Huo had to do was tell that one main instigator to behave like an adult, and he would have. He's not physically dangerous; I don't think anyone in that classroom was physically dangerous. However, he was very disruptive, and I've gotten formally blamed for EVERYTHING. It's my academic record that is getting all the negative things written in it, while I'm not getting the feeling that anything's been done to address the behavior of the people who lied about me or that anything is being put into place to prevent my being harassed by him or his friends again.
All I'm asking is that he be spoken to by the administration and told that it's very serious to make a false charge against another student, and that he can't do something like that again. I don't think that's too much to ask. Because he was the main perpetrator, I think it's the most important that he be spoken to; if you want me to identify the couple of other male students who sometimes joined his behavior, I will.
Lena Kochman
Copyright L. Kochman, July 2, 2017 @ 2:46 p.m.
