STORY 37

I reported academic wrongdoing that had compromised and made it impossible for me to complete my degree. They eventually offered a remedy and an NDA. I thought it would help to put the experience behind me but it didn’t. I think it completely ruined my life.

I had no idea that by gagging me – the accountability for the incomplete degree shifted from the people responsible for undermining it – to me – that now would appear to others that this was a personal failure, that I was academically incapable and I had only myself to blame. I moved on, or thought I had, I re-invented myself, thrived for a while but when I moved into a new role, things changed.

What I didn’t understand when I signed was that there will always be abusive people out there ready to take painful experiences like that to use them to their advantage, to misrepresent, diminish and control others. Several people did that to me and they have caused so much more harm. It’s so terribly unfair and I wish someone had told me before I signed, that NDAs are only made to protect the people and institutions that caused another person harm, that NDAs force the person harmed into silence, which HELPS abusive people instead of holding them accountable, that the harmed person who agrees to silence can’t warn others to protect them and they can’t talk about the pain or grief they carry from that loss and that silence will take a great personal toll.  And if people suspect a person may have signed an NDA, the person who was harmed and gagged can be vulnerable to new abuses.

Signing that NDA was a mistake. My only choices were to take all the losses and get no help, or sign and at least there is some help. But I was hurt. I was entitled to the help. What was wrong was to tie that help to an NDA. Because the NDA crippled me, it forced me into being part of a cover up, it shifted the accountability for my incomplete degree off of the people responsible and onto me in the form of stigma, stigma with a forced impairment that made me vulnerable to being hurt by others.

I want the university to quietly release me from the NDA I signed. I was the one who was hurt, but by making me sign an NDA, all the people who negligently undermined my degree walked off to better jobs without looking back, whereas I am still suffering- all these years later – because people can still exploit and distort the circumstances around my incomplete degree to humiliate and hurt me.

It’s completely inappropriate for universities to make students who were harmed by any form of wrongdoing sign NDAs. It’s just wrong.