What do you do when you realize there’s no time left on your collegiate clock?
Well, that’s when you best call in the BWC (Big White Cauc)…
“Uh, sorry, my dude, but I can’t help you with your experiment–I’m moving to my new apartment that day.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, thanking my lucky stars that I happened to have such an airtight and ironclad alibi/excuse to keep me from getting wrangled into somebody else’s scientific inquest. I mean, I was smack-dab in the middle of trying to get my own advanced physics degree–I didn’t have time to be doing Charles’ dirty work just because he was the senior post-doc in our lab and I was but a lowly grad student.
“Ahh, okay, I see. Good luck moving then, BJ…” Charles replied in his very distinct Chinese-is-my-first-language cadence before wandering off to go find another more willing lab-mate.
Once he was out of earshot, I allowed myself to ponder my thoughts freely (ya know, just in case I accidentally thought my thoughts out loud, as one is oft wont to do).
“Geez, I hope he doesn’t think I didn’t help him just because he’s Chinese–I’m not racist, I’m just lazy! Plus, I am technically moving that day, even though I’m not sure what time Mark plans to take me to pick up our U-Haul truck…” I told myself.
“And speaking of Mark, he’s about to become my new roommate and he‘s Asian–not to mention our third roommate, Oliver, who’s Black–so I’m like doubly non-racist…”
“The professor said we could do the homework as a group,” Mark told me excitedly.
“Yeah, I get that,” I responded. “But one little detail you’re overlooking–I’m not exactly one of the so-called ‘students’ in your math class…”
Mark was unfazed, his confidence in his plan undeterred.
“Hey, he didn’t specify who could work on the homework problems, just that it could be done in a group. C’mon, help a brother out!”
I sighed a deep sigh of resignation instead of relief this time. I knew I couldn’t leave his sorry ass hanging on account of hypothetical ‘integrity’.
“Ok, I’ll help you with your stupid homework, but I swear, I better not get kicked out of UNC for helping you cheat your way to graduation.”
Now, now, I know what you, Dear Reader, must be thinking, all judging me for doing my friends’ homework for them all willy-nilly, but I swear I’m not that type of guy. If you could just reserve your jumping to conclusions just for a few seconds and lemme explain.
You first gotta understand Mark and the position he was in back in the Summer of ’07. You see, when Marky-boy started as a freshman here at UNC even further back in the Fall of ’97, did he ever in his wildest dreams think he would achieve tenure at such a prodigious young age…
Wait a sec…
*checks notes*
Oh, that’s my bad, I said ‘tenure’–like what every professor hopes to achieve so they can become virtual impossible to be fired by their university despite their academic output and/or sexual misconduct–when what I meant to say was ‘ten-year’,1For the record, like me, Mark is a pretty ----- funny guy, and this was his joke, not mine. which has a slightly different meaning.
As it so happened, Mark had gotten a letter from UNC earlier in the year, notifying him of their ‘ten-year’ policy: if you don’t graduate with a GPA of 2.0 or higher within 10 years of taking your first class at Carolina, they will be like Ice Cube in the hit 1995 movie Friday:
That’s right: he was on the verge of getting permanently banned from taking classes (and therefore, banned from graduating) at UNC. EVER. No matter how many classes you took or how much money you had given them, all of it would be worthy exactly jack-squat–they wouldn’t even let a dude transfer credits to another institution of higher learning with lower standards!
Now, I’m not going to get into the details of why, 9-1/2 years later, Mark still hadn’t graduated, but one notable factor was the whole “you need a GPA 2.0 or higher” thing. So, sitting at a solid 1.85 circa January 2007, and only one required class away from a math degree, Mark hatched a himself a little scheme to finally achieve what all previous versions of Mark had failed to do: get over 2.0, get his diploma, and wash his hands of UNC before they washed their hands of him first.
And there I was discovering that I was now going to be an accomplice in his plan. Well, at least the ‘summer math class’ part of the plan–not trusting himself to be able to land an ‘A’ in the math class, he wisely decided to hedge his bets and also enrolled in a ‘summer health class’–“sure to be an easy A!” he said…
“I’m so screwed.”
That’s about all my future roomie (yes, I’m talking about Mark, duh) could say after he got his first test score back.
“I thought you said that your math class was all homework except for the final exam. What are you even talking about?” I asked, slightly confused.
“It’s not the math class–it’s the health class! UNC is really trying to screw me over aren’t they? Baiting me into the ‘easiest class in the catalog’ and then switching it up by asking questions only white girls would know the answers to!” he complained.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa–are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“That UNC, as institution, is systemically racist against Asians and other non-white minorities? Yes! That’s exactly what I’m saying!”
“Huh. That’s funny, because what I’m hearing is that my lily-white ass is going to be pulling weekly all-nighters this summer, seeing as how now you’re going to need an A+ in math to graduate. Let it never be said that, on account of all my sacrifices I make for you, my token Vietnamese friend, that I am racist against Asians…”
So…you maybe wondering where this is all going. Well, you’re going to have to wait until next week to find out answers to questions like: Will I have a drama-free move? Will Mark ever graduate?
And most importantly, will we see any more Asian-related racism? Stay tuned, Dear Reader, stay tuned…
Content created on: 14/16/17 September 2023 (Thurs/Sat/Sun)
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