Hello
I filed a complaint against my supervisors for what they did to me. I had a meeting with the academic registrar and he was horrified about everything I was telling him and I had evidence for everything I said. He told me that he is going to respond in a week but it has been three months. I filed the complaint in December 2018 and now I have graduated and finished from the university but I don’t want to leave what my supervisors did without a punishment.
The university is in Scotland, any suggestions?
Best Regards
I know you didn’t ask for praise but I think that standing up to your supervisors is very brave and you should be proud. Definitely chase this up, is there a student union representative you can liaise with to offer you advice ? It’s really awful that they have not gotten back to you in so long , and I know it takes a lot of energy but sometimes unless you really really push them and get lots of other parties involved the university will try to do nothing. Additionally , it may be worth seeking advice from the office of the independent adjudicator for higher education https://www.oiahe.org.uk/
Good luck and let us know how it progresses !
Seriously what are you trying to achieve? You have graduated and can move on with your life. The supervisors may have been horrific but you you did graduate and that is what really matters in the end. Nothing good comes from vengeance.
I think there is an element of truth in what rewt says however unwelcome it may be to hear. Students filing complaints tend to want to be 100% in the right and for the person complained about to suffer. The problem is that there is usually right and wrong on both sides, which tends to leave all concerned feeling dissatisfied. In particular, as another thread is showing, students are frequently shocked to discover their own behaviour has been documented and will be taken into account. Or the rules ensuring equal treatment of all students will be taken seriously. In short, I wouldn't get over-invested in the complaints process, you've made the complaint, but you need to move on and start on the next phase of your career too. Don't obsess about it as you are very unlikely to be wholly satisfied by the outcome.
I am not actually sure what to say but I do feel my point still stands. Your have graduated, your PhDs are over and all that stuff is behind. If you worked in a bad company with a bad boss but left the company, you do not continue to complain to that boss. Closure is a hard thing but it does let you move on with your life.
During my placement year I had a really shit boss (made me hate industry for a while) but he was a nice person. When my placement was nearly over, we had a long candid talk/meeting about what we thought went wrong. We both admitted that we weren't perfect and I think we both learnt a lot, just by talking about both our mistakes. Nothing went down on paper and no blame was assigned. That is what I think is a constructive professional way of improving things. Not an adversarial format like a formal complaint.
I understand that you want to prevent it happening in the same thing happening to other people in the future. But formal complaints are a huge amount of paperwork that is all on record and can affect the supervisor/ university for years to come. Making the complaint known and letting the complaint be dealt with internally is the best course of action unless you have enough to go court. You only win internal procedures if you have enough to win in court.
Again if you haven't graduated or passed, I completely support you in any university procedure.
According to my personal experience to appeal to the university it is important to file a complaint in case you might need that in the future. When I submitted my second appeal in which I pointed out inadequate supervisory team. The university comments on that saying I did not raise any concerns of my poor supervisory team within the previous two years APR, therefore, they refused to take into consideration as an appeal instead a complaint. I highly recommend you file a compliant since you had done so. Recording everything for the sake of the worse scenario.
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