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Institutions

See also authorities.

I was attending my first "college" class at a local community college to earn some extra credits and subdue boredom during the summer (2002). My expectations for that class included; a variety of new people to meet, in-depth writing, and an introduction to the 'college experience'. On the first day of class, the instructor displayed several things which strongly offended me. The Composition 1 class was small, roughly 12 people enrolled the first day. The teacher, after going through a second-grade-like orientation, asked my close friend (who moved from China two years ago) if she liked 'her own food'. Her racial slurs continued, as did her constant abusive attention to Lisa, throughout the class.
      Midway through the first day she turned to one of the African American students and said something to the effect of 'you should just drop my class now.' Being in a small town, racism wasn't anything new to us. When we got our first assignments back another infuriating occurance happened. Nearly every white student recieved an A on their first paper. Some of these were read aloud, in which sentences like 'and I ain't even met him yet' were dictated from some of the older white females. Their incorrect grammar was ignored, their grades did NOT reflect their ability or effort. One of the African American students read a *perfect* paragraph of his paper. He had beautiful word fluency, sentence structure, and no errors that stood out to me (or anyone sitting near me). His grade was a low C.
      The unfairness was evident. I thought 'enough is enough'. I wrote a petition that basically said 'Sign below if you have witnessed any of the following behaviors/events in Mrs. _____ Comp 1 class,' and had a list of general things that might have been seen by other students. Every single student in class signed immediately (excluding 2 older white females who didn't think the "n****** belonged in their class anyway"). The few remaining African American students in the class expressed to me that they hadn't said anything because they were 'used to it'. I thought I was going to be sick.
      I went to the President of the college with my petition, grades from several students' papers, and my heart-felt concern and disgust. He said that he would sit in on a class and see if he could see the same behaviors. The following morning he came in to oversee her lecture. She completely ignored him for about 30 seconds before *screaming* at him 'If you don't like the way I teach my class - YOU CAN TEACH IT!'. She made several rude remarks to him before fleeing campus. The assignments which we had done we regraded by the teacher (an English teacher from the high school) who came to fill in for the semester. The 'unfairness' in regards to grading was corrected. The class resumed in a more English LANGUAGE oriented fashion. The damage that was caused by that teacher, however, is something that will never leave the memories of those who were subject to her racism. (Abi, Independence, KS, USA, 09/27/02)