KEY POINTS:
Below is the full text of the email that Auckand University lecturer Paul Buchanan sent to a student from the United Arab Emirates after she requested an extension on an assignment. The text is unedited though the student's name has been removed.
Subject: RE: Extension
Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 19:24:20
From: Paul Buchanan
To: Student
Dear xxxx:
I say this reluctantly but not so subtly: you are not suitable for a graduate degree. It does not matter if your father died or if you have a medical certificate.
I have been too nice and given you too high marks all along (at C+). I do not anticipate that you will do better in the final exercise. You are already a day late.
The extension is meaningless because you have not attended the last few classes and are the worse performer in the class.
Of course by a far stretch, You will have the obiturary of your father, but even if available and the student health people might have believed you, I do not.
You are close to failing in any event, so these sort of excuses-culturally driven and preying on some sort of Western liberal guilt-are simply lame.
Prove that your father died and your were distraught and unable to complete assignments-in spite of your abysmal record to date as an underperforming and underquallifed student- and perhaps you might qualify for an extension to get a C-.
But as it stands, you will flunk since your are already a day+ late, and you trrack record is poor.
By the way-are you a Hoadley student? That would explain a lot of things.
In a word: NO-I do not accept your extensuon request.
PGB
Paul G Buchanan
Director, New Zealand Centre for Latin American Studies (NZCLAS)
