Wow Its almost been a year since this thread and so much has happened. Firstly, sorry Hobnob for being overzealous about a few things. It was a very stressful time. I will now explain what happened it’s a very long story though, and this only covers a fraction of it. Think the moral of the story is not to take any crap off your university and to always stick up for yourself.
Shortly after my posts here last year, it was another 2 weeks before the head of school got back to me with the worst brush off letter known to man. Conveniently it came weeks after the exam board had declared final results, and after the time it was too late to request a formal review. Despite the fact that the school head and board chairman(who was the deputy head mentioned) were the first to know and practically told me not to bother anymore, as it’s a matter of academic judgment.
I didn’t attend the retake for that module as it was an assessed practical with the troubled lecturer although I repeatedly tried to contact the people at the top to no avail, to say how uncomfortable I am with him assessing me. This was ignored and shortly after the retake exam board id receive a letter which encouraged me to take an exit award!!
So everything was done to cover up this lecturer’s disgrace and business went on as usual. I went to the students union, who said I could take it further, but they were pessimistic at this point as they said I was dealing with bureaucratic people who will just quote meaningless regulations at you when brushing you off. This gave me an idea though, id play there game and be much better at it.
I took it to the next level formally and they said it would be the end of summer before I would get a response, probs hoping id drop out during that time, I used that time to memorize every square millimetre of the university’s contract, as well as reading up on law that was relevant.
The next stage was very heated, they tried numerous times to catch me out on procedures and rules etc, but by this stage I knew them better than they did, and they ended up shooting themselves in the foot when I discovered they didn’t even stick to there own procedures for dealing with this. Plus regulations on marks/feedback were not followed. I then got hold of information via legal requests like exam board minutes and external reports. From this I found out that the first investigator (the duputy head) lied to me. He said things were delayed due to the lecturer being out the country and I had proof of this in an email. The exam board minutes said otherwise, showing them in the same room 3 days later. I also found out that one of other unreturned assessments, from the same lecturer was disposed off,! I demanded its release and when they said it was missing again, I reported it to the information commissioner as a failure to comply with my request and mishandling of my personal data. I also got the QAA to investigate the university after giving them the exam board minutes and commenting on the lack of external attendance. Didn’t go as far as I hoped but they did write to the vice chancellor, having a little go at him.
I had nothing to loose to I tried everything I could think of that would make the schools life as difficult as possible. Exposing every piece of dirty laundry that I could find.
The school eventually said they would concede to my complaint demands as dealing with me turned out to be more trouble than they expected. It was agreed that the modules I would do to replace the troubled double module, would be regarded as first sittings and not retakes, and the grade caps would be removed. It was also agreed that the troubled lecturer would never teach me again, and another module was then re-staffed. The vice chancellor then promised a review into assessment practice within my school.
The school head then tried to put me into a disciplinary for misconduct but he didn’t get very far and I heard nothing more of this. A rather desperate act really.
It was far from over though, I didn’t trust anybody who ran the university at that point, after all that had happened. I even spotted a way they could reverse there promised resolution. So the next few months were very edgy but at least I could keep the 2.1 grades from that semester instead of being capped at a 3rd.
Something very surprising happened after that though, I went to a friends house one evening for pre-drinks and he told me my story about the wrong assignment was in the local paper! I didn’t believe him as I had not contacted anybody in the media. But he showed me the article!! I couldn’t believe it! A journalist had read my facebook posts about it and published it. It shared the same article about another student’s posts about being arrested, it didn’t have my name or the lecturers name on it, but it was there!!!
The following day a note went up to say the lecturer was off sick, 2 weeks later he had handed in his resignation. The school head tried to explain in a lecture that he resigned to take on additional projects, and that he has only resigned from being a teacher. We all had difficulty believing this as it had happened mid year and 4 modules were left without a teacher. One was scrapped completely and the students on it had to pick a new module mid semester! The lecturers twitter had loads of comments about doom and gloom in his native language and also talked about working with idiots. All of which contradicts the school head's cover story, especially when no additional projects appeared on the research portal.
I also spoke to a girl I know in the marketing department 2 days after the paper, she knew nothing of my case and I pretended not to know, she informed me that the head of PR personally took over the matter and that others were contacting faculty’s to verify that the story was false, which certainly made me laugh as they would get a shock when they rang mine. The lecturers resignation could have had something to do with that. But to this day I don’t officially know.
Students on his modules suffered immensely because they had no teacher or any lectures for 2 months. Many blamed me for this some even threatened me saying that I had ruined there degree. Many people complained to the school about the way they had been treated, at least 20 did. The school brushed them off with a stupid letter. Thankfully those that didn’t hate me accepted my help, as I was an expert in dealing with university matters now. 4 of them managed to bypass the school and get the attention of the vice chancellor.
So its an amazing turn of events but I have certainly upset a lot of people which makes me very edgy while the exam boards are going on. Last week I saw one deputy head, who I am normally friendly with, in the smoking area and despite saying hello several times he completely ignored me and just walked back inside.
I get the feeling I am not mr popular.
Still what was i sposed to do?!