Second Week Ends

Glenn wrote:

I've been in the provost's office twice this week to see if he had talked with anyone over at Student Affairs and Enrollment Management (SAEM) or the DSS office. Monday I just left my name and email, hoping that would be enough for the provost to get back to me. It wasn't and I went back to see him again this afternoon. The administrative assistant looked into his emails to see what was going on and we went back and forth about what the provost had done or when he had done it. Then he came in the office from somewhere he had been, and I told him why I was there. So now we have a meeting set for October 7th--next Tuesday. It's only for 30 minutes, so I doubt anything earthshaking will occur.

The Office of Civil Rights in Seattle contacted me this week to set up a time for a telephone interview. They also wanted some documentation, so I arranged to obtain an electronic copy of one of these documents. I needed to scan another document so that I could email it to OCR and get the ball rolling as soon as possible. This was the investigation report that the school's Office of Equal Opportunity had done. I think it ended up being about 35 pages or so. I have other documents that I can send to them, but I am going to wait until they request them. I will tell them what I have so that they are aware of what I have.

Nobody's heard anything about the results of the meeting held on Thursday with the DSS director and a couple of upper management folks from outside state agencies. I think that I will be emailing them fairly soon to inquire about the results of this meeting or if they would like to speak with me or any of the other students affected. As a DVR client, they have a responsibility to me. I should think that they would want to get both sides of the story before determining their next move. I also think that it is important to let them know that I am very much interested in resolving this situation. If I don't contact these folks to let them know of my interest, they might make the assumption that I am not interested. That is far from the case.

I have been having some trouble obtaining my transcripts in a timely manner. Back in August, the temporary supervisor over at DSS told me that with the new policy notes would be returned to students "within the hour." He told me that DSS has a team of clerical staff that will do editing. I thought that was a stupid idea because how can the clerical staff know what points need emphasis and what ones don't? They weren't in the class, so they would have no idea. Editing transcripts is a lot more than just running the spellcheck feature on Word. Fast-forward to today. I emailed the new coordinator and the former supervisor that I have been experiencing delays in obtaining the transcripts and mentioned that "within the hour" comment. The new coordinator didn't think that comment was specific (because it isn't), and went on to say a lot of nothing much in several sentences. Then later on I got an email from that former supervisor stating that he didn't recall making that comment. Sure, and he lost the transcript of the meeting where he said it. That doesn't mean he can deny to me that he ever made that "within the hour" comment because he made it in front of a witness who will say that he DID say that. His credibility is getting quite scarce. Sooo after a bunch of back and forth emailing with the new coordinator, I finally received all the transcripts that I was supposed to have. This new system they have for getting the transcripts to students sure leaves something to be desired. Under the former coordinator, the policy was "within 24 hours" but was usually a lot less than that--oftentimes only a few hours, and usually much less than 12 hours. Transcripts were never lost either, and nobody made ridiculous comments like "within the hour." *scoff*

That's all I have for tonight, It's been an exhausting week. I will post again sometime this weekend.