One of my very good friends is going through hell and back just so she could get a retrospective withdrawal from one of her university classes. Last semester, she suffered sexual assault, and her grades for one of her subjects went down tremendously despite studying and working her hardest. She is still trying to heal and work through the emotional pain, but she now has to deal with all this paperwork just to prove that there was a valid reason her grades dropped. She had to call up the police station for a copy of her report and collapsed into tears.

What sort of system forces people who’ve faced trauma to REVISIT their trauma just so they could get their educational record in order? My friend is doubling up her university work to make up for last time. How fair is this? She’s gone through a lot of pain, she’s still trying to deal with it, but the university demands that she stills perform academically so she has to pretty much do two semester’s work in one.

The process is demeaning and unnecessary. Why must victims of assault go through all that trouble just to prove themselves? Apparently many people have tried to cheat the system before, hence the paperwork. But how many of those who would benefit from special consideration or retrospective withdrawal just give up because it’s too draining?

How many schools put academic performance above all else? Where you are so pressured to perform that you have to put your mental and emotional needs aside and just slog through papers? It’s not like the papers actually help anyone. They get looked at, graded, then shoved aside. It’s all busywork. And the poor person writing up to 10,000 words a week just to catch up (like my friend) has to also get all that paperwork in order and try to continue with her life.

This just isn’t right. This angers and saddens me. This is unfair.