"Don't put words in my mouth"

Update (September 2025)

My student submitted a request to expunge / seal the disciplinary record. The request was swiftly approved. However, it will not take effect until the end of the semester and therefore is still doing continuing harm. The delay feels less like procedure and more like a final insult. It's like a petty refusal to offer immediate relief, as if to say, “We’ll approve it, but you’ll still suffer a little longer.”

The OS⬛R has never owned up to its wrongdoing. It has never apologized for its atrocity. It now hopes the speed of approval will be mistaken for efficiency and compassion. But it's nothing more than a quiet admission of guilt. It just doesn't have the guts to say it. It hopes no one will notice the cowardice, the corruption, the cruelty. It hopes we’ll forget.

It is wrong. We won’t.

The Office of Student and Responsibilities (OS⬛R) says it champions student rights and claims to "promote responsibility and encourage honesty, integrity, and respect." Yet, the way it handles its conduct hearings is anything but.

A former student of mine was summoned to the OS⬛R to face false allegations, and I had the honor of serving as my student's Case Advisor. I stood with my student, combed through the so-called “evidence,” and prepared them to walk into a hearing knowing that the odds were not in our favor. Though I was permitted to be present during the hearing, I was not allowed to speak. My student had to fight alone and I was powerless to intervene. Across the table, the "conduct officer" (let's call her "A.W.") played all roles: prosecutor, judge, and jury while wielding unchecked authority without oversight. This wasn’t justice. It was theater. And like every theater with absolute power behind the curtain, the outcome was already written.

"A.W." and her sycophant underling "D.P."

Despite the stacked deck and an abrasive and unbecoming "A.W.", my student showed courage and composure. They held their head high, spoke with conviction, and modeled a kind of integrity that both the OS⬛R and "A.W." sorely and shamefully lacked. It was a triumph of character. And I couldn’t be prouder of my student. The "conduct officer" "A.W.", who publicly and boastfully brags on LinkedIn about her knowledge in “holistic student development,” and "developmental coach approach," has a lot to learn from my student.

But wait, it gets better. After putting my student through a mental and emotional waterboarding, this ever-compassionate “conduct officer” "A.W." decided to demonstrate her deep, heartfelt concern. How? By filing a student-of-concern report. A touching gesture, really. Like handing someone a Band-Aid after pushing them down the stairs. If there is a textbook example of crocodile tears, this was it.

Predictably, we lost. But not because we were wrong, unprepared, or even naïve. We lost because we were never allowed to win. This was a rigged match masquerading as a fair hearing. "A.W." and the OS⬛R delivered a verdict that read like it was rubber-stamped days in advance (ironically echoing the exact concern we raised, only to be shut down by "A.W." with a smug, scolding “don’t put words in my mouth.”)

The punishment? A spectacle. A grotesque overreaction dressed up as education, yet utterly devoid of genuine pedagogical value. It was performance over substance, optics over ethics. And "A.W."? A self-righteous gatekeeper of morality who couldn’t be bothered with nuance or honesty. Her selective enforcement, condescending theatrics, and blatant disregard for fairness made one thing crystal clear: integrity wasn’t just absent, it was actively opposed. This wasn’t justice. It was theater. And we were forced to play along in a kangaroo court where the outcome was purely for boosting the fragile ego of "A.W."

"A.W." scolding us

So, I appealed to "A.W."'s supervisor "J.S.". And what did I get? The same calcified wall of institutional indifference we’ve all come to expect: policies wielded like riot shields, replies so devoid of thought they might as well be auto-generated, and a pathological aversion to anything resembling honest dialogue.

Let’s drop the charade. “A.W.” wasn’t some rogue actor. She was the poster child for a system that rewards arrogance and punishes integrity. The OS⬛R didn’t just condone her behavior; they canonized it with a promotion. That’s not oversight. It’s complicity.

The entire ordeal was designed to demoralize. But it didn’t succeed. Because in the grand scheme, “A.W.” is a footnote. She is just an insecure bureaucrat clinging to a title like it’s a lifeline. And the OS⬛R? A paper tiger puffed up with jargon and empty gestures. A theater of accountability where the script is rigged and the audience is expected to applaud.

Reaction of "J.S" to my appeal

But here’s the turn they didn’t expect: we’re not staying silent. Silence is their shield. It is how they stall, how they smother truth, how they gamble on our forgetfulness. But we remember. We speak because they dread the light. We speak because rot festers in the dark. And we speak because the next student deserves more than this charade.

As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel once warned: “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

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