Abusive Treatment of Graduate Students

Tue Apr 26 19:39:52 UTC 2005

Dear Fellow SEELANGers,
	Sonya Tolpova’s recent posting concerning the
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at
UCLA, which may appear to represent the collective
opinion of the current graduate students of that
department, does not.  It is not a collective project
of the graduate students.  In fact, it appears that
many (and possibly even most ) of the current graduate
students were, until very recently, unaware even of
the existence of a “graduatestudentabuse”
web site of any continuing campaign on behalf of (or
against, depending upon one’s point of view) the
department.  It may be worth adding that none of those
graduate students whom I have contacted over the past
half-hour seem to be acquainted Ms. Tolpova herself.
	What is absolutely clear to me, as a member of the
Department and a participant in the Review process
discussed in the posting, is that the posting and the
web site in no way represent the view of the Slavic
Department’s graduate students.  Rather, the
consensus among the graduate students is that, while
(as is always the case) there may be issues worth
discussing and improvements that can be made,
UCLA’s Slavic Department is presently a fine
department with good relations among the students and
faculty and unusually high education standards.
	This is not to underestimate the gravity any of the
issues raised about the state of the department in
prior years, issues to which I (and most of the
current graduate students) cannot speak – and
need not speak.  Our Slavic Department, however, is
one to which I, personally, am proud to belong.

JW Narins

--- "Tolpova, Sonya" <sonya_tolpova at YAHOO.COM> wrote:

> To All Members of the Slavic And Eastern European
> Academic Community:
>
> The purpose of this email is to alert you to the
> existence of a website
> detailing the abuse of graduate students in the UCLA
> Department of Slavic
> Languages and Literatures and the subsequent
> attempts by faculty members
> and the UCLA Administration to minimize and cover up
> this abuse.  There
> have long been whispers in the Slavic academic
> community in this country
> concerning the treatment of graduate students in
> this particular program,
> abuse which came to light officially in the
> 1999-2000 Eight-Year Review.
> The situation had become so grave by the late 1990s
> that students were
> actually taking it upon themselves to speak, off the
> record, with officials
> of the UCLA Academic Administration, informing them
> of the conditions under
> which they had been forced to pursue their studies
> in the UCLA Slavic
> Department.  The UCLA Academic Administration
> encouraged these students to
> use the upcoming review process to air their
> grievances and to bring about
> change, and further guaranteed that these students
> would be provided
> anonymity and protection from any retaliatory moves
> that might come from
> the UCLA faculty.  This promise of protection was
> repeated several times
> during the process, and in fact was featured
> prominently in the Eight-Year
> Review report itself:
>
> "It goes without saying that the willingness of
> numerous students to speak
> with the review team (but not to be quoted) was
> critical in arriving at the
> decision to take the above actions. Let it,
> therefore, be clearly
> understood that the slightest indication of
> retaliation by faculty against
> students will be aggressively investigated by the
> Graduate Council to
> determine whether charges should be filed with the
> appropriate Senate
> Committee for violations of the Faculty Code of
> Conduct, not only for
> recent but also for any past offences."
>
> Unfortunately, when the initial reports from the
> investigating committees,
> reports that were extremely critical of the UCLA
> Slavic Department, were
> made available to the Department itself, some of its
> faculty members
> immediately began questioning graduate students in
> the Department as to
> their role in the review.  Although the UCLA
> Academic Administration
> initially directed the faculty of the Slavic
> Department to cease asking
> such questions, this same Administration quickly
> backed down in the face of
> threats by members of the Slavic Department faculty
> to challenge this
> prohibition in court as an abridgement of their
> First Amendment rights.
>
> This was the turning point in the process, and it
> quickly became clear that
> not only were the faculty members of the Slavic
> Department willing to do or
> say anything to deny the charges being leveled
> against them, but also that
> the Academic Administration was going to renege on
> the promise made to
> graduate students to the effect that they would be
> protected from
> retaliation and interrogation at the hands of the
> Slavic Department
> faculty.  Even more disturbing, it quickly became
> clear that the Academic
> Administration was going to do whatever it took to
> protect the UCLA Slavic
> Department.  The Eight-Year Review report was
> extremely critical of the
> UCLA Slavic Department ("This level of graduate
> program dysfunction is
> unprecedented in the collective experience of this
> review team...") and
> recommended that the Department:
>
> 1. Be prohibited from admitting any more graduate
> students;
>
> 2. Be put into receivership.
>
> Although the UCLA Academic Administration imposed a
> short ban on graduate
> student admissions, it quickly relented and allowed
> the UCLA Slavic
> Department to admit students for the next academic
> year.  The
> Administration also refused to put the Slavic
> Department into receivership,
> allowing the chairman of the Department to keep his
> position, this despite
> the fact that he repeatedly lied during the
> investigation to UCLA's own
> investigation team (documented repeatedly in the
> report itself) and despite
> the fact that he actually broke the law by releasing
> to unauthorized third
> parties the grades from the undergraduate transcript
> of the one student
> (actually, a former student) who allowed her story
> to be told publicly.
>
> At this point it became very clear that no real
> change in the system itself
> was going to be initiated.  Not a single professor
> was ever disciplined or
> terminated for his or her actions, and indeed, there
> was never even an
> official investigation into the abuses themselves.
> There was a follow up
> review of the Department two years later in 2003,
> and two years after that
> (2004-2005) there was yet another review, the third
> and final act in this
> tragic-comedy, no doubt meant to provide the wider
> scholarly community with
> the impression that the UCLA Slavic Department had
> risen like a phoenix
> from the ashes, new, improved, and completely
> reformed.
>
> The details of what went on during the first review
> and how the University
> conspired to cover up and minimize the abuse
> uncovered by that review, are
> to be found in the report located at the
> aforementioned website,
> www.graduatestudentabuse.org.   It is a large report
> divided into eight
> sections and includes narrative, commentary,
> original documentation,
> letters, email communications, and publications. It
> is comprehensive and
> detailed, and more documentation involving the abuse
> of graduate students
> in that particular department is currently in
> preparation.  The purpose
> behind making this information available to the
> public at large is not only
> to expose what was happening in the UCLA Slavic
> Department, but even more
> importantly, to expose the processes of
> minimalization and cover up
> employed by the UCLA Academic Administration in its
> attempt to keep the
> true conditions at the University from being made
> known to the public.
>
> The past decade and a half has been a trying time
> for the field of Slavic
> and Eastern European studies.  As the market for
> scholars in this field has
> steadily shrunk, it has become that much more
> difficult to attract top
> academic talent to enroll in our various graduate
> programs.  Those who
> nevertheless do choose to take the chance and make
> the leap into this
> uncertain field deserve to be treated with respect
> and dignity.  The type
> of abuse that went on for years in the UCLA Slavic
> Department should have
> no place in academe.   Such abuse, and the attempts
> by the University to
> cover up this abuse and protect those faculty
> members who were guilty of
> this abuse, only serve to harm the field of Slavic
> and East European
> studies. Students in the UCLA Department of Slavic
> Languages and
> Literatures at UCLA did everything in their power,
> as can be seen by
> reading the report at the website mentioned above,
> to work within the
> system to bring about change.  It was only when it
> became apparent that
> this system was designed not to bring about real and
> substantive change,
> but only superficial change intended to keep the
> system itself intact, that
> no other choice was left but to go public.
>
> Not every department at UCLA was as abusive towards
> its graduate students
> as was the UCLA Slavic Department, and this report
> is not meant to suggest
> that students should not enroll in graduate school
> at UCLA.  Graduate
> students from the UCLA Slavic Department know very
> well that there are a
> number of departments at UCLA that do indeed treat
> their students with the
> respect and dignity commensurate with their status
> as scholars in
> training.  And yet, the fact is, there are very real
> limits to which the
> UCLA Academic Administration is willing (or even
> able) to go to protect
> these students should they become victims of abusive
> behavior on the part
> of faculty members.  Those of you who are
> considering doing graduate work
> at UCLA would do well to know all the facts before
> making your decision.
> If, after reading through this report, you still
> decide that UCLA is the
> school for you, then at least you will have made
> this decision knowing
> ahead of time what to expect in terms of options
> should you yourself run
> into the same type of behavior which for years
> characterized the UCLA
> Slavic Department.  Likewise, those of you who are
> in a position to advise
> and recommend graduate students should also be aware
> of what is happening
> here at UCLA, both in the Slavic Department itself
> and with regard to the
> Academic Administration and its attitudes towards
> protecting graduate
> students (all graduate students, not just Slavic
> graduate students) who
> choose to pursue their studies here.
>
> Abusive behavior by those higher in the academic
> hierarchy towards those
> lower in the hierarchy is hardly an unknown
> phenomenon within the world of
> academe.  This abuse can take many forms, as it did
> in the UCLA Slavic
> Department, but the one thing that most instances of
> abuse have in common
> is that the abuse itself can only flourish in the
> dark.  When the light of
> day finally shines on such abuses, and when those
> involved in the system
> demand transparency instead of secrecy, it is at
> this point that such
> abusive behavior and misconduct can be exposed and
> eliminated, and it is
> indeed for this reason that this report was compiled
> and posted publicly.
>
> There will be those who decry efforts such as this,
> claiming that abusive
> behavior on the part of professors towards graduate
> students has always
> been a part of higher education, and always will be.
>  It is possible that
> they are right.  But if change is ever going to come
> about, it will not be
> because people stood by and looked on silently as
> this abuse was being
> meted out to graduate students.  If change is going
> to come, it will be
> because people who are in the know find the courage
> to stand up and make it
> known to the larger scholarly community and to the
> public at large just
> what exactly is going on behind the benign scholarly
> façade presented by
> the University.  It may or may not be the case that
> exposés such as this
> one will succeed in preventing the abusive treatment
> of graduate students
> in the future.  What an exposé like this one will
> do, however, is make
> clear to those who perpetrate such abuse that there
> is no longer any
> guarantee that they will be able to continue to do
> so in the dark and
> without others knowing of their conduct.
>
> www.graduatestudentabuse.org
>
>
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