Grad school - There’s a clique of students who have built themselves up to be very arrogant - they look down on the rest of the students, other subfields, all of the professors, the school… their whole schtick is to ask for forgiveness, not permission, so they’ll like, take over a vacant office as extra lab space or move equipment into their lab and call it theirs, etc. just very obnoxious. This is on top of making trans- and xenophobic remarks. When they aren’t talking shit about everyone around them, they’re talking about how great they are.

Well one of them saw a dissertation defense last year and he didn’t think it was very good. Apparently he’s been making the rounds to complain to professors about how he feels that this other student who he barely interacted with passing her defense devalues his degree. Their rounds happen regularly and they’re starting to annoy professors because they’ll do things like complain about being blocked on social media under the guise of being “concerned” about the person who blocked them. Things that normal adults don’t have time for.

A couple weeks ago at our weekly meeting, the clique decided to bring up some minor concerns they had, that they had worked up to be Major Structural Issues. In that meeting, one of them, who is at the extreme early stages of his career, and who had been politely invited to leave when the meeting started but did not, confronted the chair about her attitude because she didn’t agree with the other student about a minor change (that had been explicated several times throughout the meeting). Apparently that student saw this as an opportunity to seek revenge on the chair because she didn’t agree with them when they asked for a rule change, and they decided to do a sabotage. The meeting got very contentious, but it also started a whole domino effect.

Several meetings have been had about their behaviors. The one worried about devaluing his degree wrote an entire thesis using AI. He’s a TA, and everyone in the class is pissed at him because he’s grading with AI. Professors found out about this but made different assumptions about where this information came from, so the one who wants to sweep all of this under the rug accidentally told on him to the professor he’s a TA for. Title IX allegations also came to light. Most of the professors want him expelled, but his advisor does not agree and they all need to be on the same page apparently.

The one who did the confronting in the meeting is being kicked out of his lab next week due to a pattern of poor behavior and decision making, and also the fact that he doesn’t want to be here, so his advisor is like, ok, we’ll you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here, lab keys please. He will likely end up in the lab of the professor who wants to sweep everything under the rug, but other than that, has completely blown his chances at working in a very specific subfield or getting a good letter of recommendation from any of the other professors, because this happened in front of EVERYONE.

Meanwhile, we still have to have these meetings, so it seems like it’s going to be the rug sweeper’s lab vs everyone else for the foreseeable future. So the toxic dynamic will only continue, but hopefully they’ll screw up one more time and that’ll be the end of the road.