Fueled by a desire to become a teacher, Loren Mayshark entered Hunter College in 2008, with the intention of gaining a master's degree in two years. Six years and tens of thousands of dollars later, he abandoned his studies without attaining the deg...
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On February 5, 2015, I met with Professor Lebowitz, the only professor I'd studied under at Hunter with whom I felt I had a genuine connection that stretched beyond the classroom. We met for coffee near the Lincoln Center in Manhattan. After we exchanged a little small talk we got down to Hunter business. He told me how he had been pushed from the program after his contract was not renewed. He tried multiple times to contact Hunter president Terry Daub, and she continually ignored his emails. She simply ignored him until he left. He told me other horror stories about professors I had never met who were pushed from their positions because, like him, they were perceived to be aligned with other members of the department or for various other reasons. The reasons were solely political and had nothing to do with academics.
As we spoke I began to feel a little better, because I stopped feeling alone. My particular situation there made me feel so isolated, and because it was such a large part of my life it had warped my sense of reality. It was so long and confusing that I was unsure whether all of these seemingly unconscionable things that were happening at the hands of these academics were real or whether I was distorting the facts in my mind.
On February 26 I sent Provost Derewitz an email to follow up. After hearing nothing for over two months, I followed Lebowitz's advice and sent the letter to President Daub on March 10. It was signed for by someone in her office a few days later. On April 3, as I was just about to send Terry Daub a follow-up email, a certified letter arrived from Morta Derewitz.
The letter was filled with lies and inconsistencies from everyone who had been involved in the situation. There were no apologies, just a cold and businesslike tone. She ended the letter with this frustratingly unrepentant statement: "Unfortunately, by deciding, of your own volition, to leave the program, despite the attention you have received from the Department, I regret to conclude, with the Department, that you are not in a position to earn the MA in History at Hunter College."
I was not surprised that they put the entire onus on me. What did surprise me a little was that everyone involved who was questioned about the situation at least exaggerated the truth, and many flat-out lied. Some of the things they said about the chronology were impossible and others were simply not true. The letter was poorly written, and littered with inconsistencies and untruths.
One of the glaring inconsistencies was with regard to my experience with Professor Caraja. She interviewed Professor Caraja, who told her that we met three times for meetings that lasted "at least two hours." Then they said that I had "weekly opportunities to visit Professor Caraja during office hours." She added that I had "dropped by at the end of office hours" and that he only had "10-15 minutes" before he had to get ready for his evening class. She said I was able to review the exam for more than an hour. She said that I would then be able to return to study the exam again during office hours, and finished by ominously saying, "you did not."
I have already stated my version of these events, which makes some of these wild claims impossible. He said that I had "dropped by at the end of office hours" for a meeting, which I had set up months in advance, and he had told me that he was completely unavailable for the rest of the time I was in New York City. I did not have "weekly opportunities to visit Professor Caraja during office hours" because I lived four hundred miles away. I had moved home because I could not afford to continue to live in the city while pursuing the degree.
Let's consider for a moment that their erroneous claim that we met three times for two hours is correct. This means that, including the hour of review I had for the exam, I had a net seven hours with this professor to work on my two exams and my thesis. I no longer have access to all of the financial records from this period of my life, but a low-end estimate of the cost for maintaining my matriculation, paying for a thesis (it should be pointed out that I did not pay for the thesis until my second thesis with Professor Rosencrass in 2013), and miscellaneous fees paid to Hunter (not including the money paid to travel four hundred miles each way to the school and other related expenses) is at least $1,400. This means that they were charging me roughly $200 per hour to sit and have these discussions with someone who ultimately did not believe that working with me was worth his time.
When I sent the response to Professor Lebowitz he was alarmed when he read the letter. He said that he knew how Derewitz wrote and that it was not her who had written the letter. He gave me a stern warning that this was written by a lawyer. He suggested that I simply walk away and never look back. Derewitz has since been rewarded for this and other deeds for the administration at Hunter with a new position and a raise to her six-figure salary.
