Thursday 1 October 2015

graduate school - Do universities care about bias experienced in group projects?



I am a master's student, and I will complete my master's program soon. During my second year of my MA program, I had to work on a two-semester group project because it was a requirement for the program. My question is the types of critical issues universities care about because universities seem to see issues like academic dishonesty as the most serious offense. Would universities care about the types of incidents that I am about to share below?


Example:


I was in a group project of five people, and four of the members were Caucasians (I am a racial minority female). I was treated terribly by two of the members (one female and one male). We had the final paper that was due just yesterday. The male, who was the editor, tends to procrastinate, and he literally waited until the last minute to make significant changes, and demanded from everyone to make the changes. We did this paper in a shared Google Doc by the way. I had another paper that was due at exactly the same date and time, so by the time that he started to become actively involved, I was much more focused on my other paper. He sent everyone an email on the morning of the day just before the due date, demanding significant changes. I was able to look at emails late that night, and he had sent me another email in the evening, asking if I was still involved in the project. By this time, I was already much more focused on my other paper. My response to his email was that I understand that we all have different schedules, and it is possible that we do things at different times. I had worked on the document and made changes a few days before he became actively involved. His response was basically how dare I challenge him, and called me a passive-aggressive person. He even dropped the F-bomb in his response. Now, the other girl. She also had similar tendencies to procrastinate and got along well with this male. On the document, she purposefully deleted my name, and put a comment, "Let's keep it this way." My relationships with these two individuals had not been positive throughout the year, but I think this incident went very far.


I never had these kinds of incidents during my four years of undergrad at a different university in the US. I am certain that this type of incident is very rare, especially at the graduate school level. I think that I should share my experience with the school because I think that this is a critical issue.




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