I was assigned to a male lawyer at the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education. When I asked if I could have a female lawyer, I was told that I couldn't.
He sent me three emails. One was an email with a form attached that asked me to describe what had happened at school. Another was an email with a form attached that said that I could request a waiver so that the Office for Civil Rights could include information about things that happened at school last year, since the deadline for reporting them had passed. The other email was in response to my asking how I should contact the school's payment office to start paying off the bill of $616 that the school is charging me for the French class from which the school's retaliatory suspension of me withdrew me and gave me an F despite my having had an A for every quiz and test and for all of the homework. I thought that the letter that the Dean of Students had written when she suspended me said that I couldn't contact anyone at the school. The lawyer said he didn't think the letter said that, and so I have sent money orders every month to the school's payment office, while the "investigation" by the Office for Civil Rights has pended.
I spent the rest of the summer after the retaliatory suspension organizing and sending information to the email address of the lawyer at the Office for Civil Rights; sending copies of emails, writing about what had happened, describing conversations, trying to give context to what I was discussing, sending everything into the ether, hoping that someone was listening. I also sent documentation every week of the A average that I maintained for the homework and quizzes that I took at the standardized website, and the midterm test, for the Personal Finance class from which the school had already withdrawn me and also give me a final grade of F.
I don't know if the lawyer ever read a paragraph of anything that I wrote in my own defense. The waiver request was denied, which I didn't know until yesterday when I received the letter of dismissal, even though I had spent the rest of August and the first two weeks of September organizing and sending information.
I was too upset yesterday to spend a lot of time reading every sentence of the letter of dismissal. I did read that the Office for Civil Rights didn't tell the school that I had filed a report, which means that the Office for Civil Rights didn't ask anyone at school what had happened. It didn't investigate at all.
I don't know why I thought that, this time, an agency that is supposed to protect my rights would protect my rights. It was probably what I needed to think so that I wouldn't implode.
I've been awake since quarter after 3 this morning and have had a raging headache since last night.
Money is the most powerful force in the world. Those who have it can do whatever they want, even commit crime. Those who don't are attacked for being attacked.
