The following is a post from Mind Soup about an AUB student who was fired from a position in AUB due to expressing his opinion about "wasta" in admissions. Unfortunately, the original article is not available online anymore, but it can be requested from this link.A month ago, I got recommended by a friend to work for Align, the official Olayan School of Business (OSB) monthly electronic newsletter at the American University of Beirut (AUB). I applied and immediately got accepted.
Republishing rights have been acquired recently, however, this article was originally published on April 22, 2010.
Two weeks ago, the letters of acceptances to the AUB Medical School were sent out to senior premedical students. In short, several very qualified candidates did not get acceptance letters while others with much lower grades got the approval. The role of ‘wasta’ (i.e. connections) was very apparent, especially with the new rolling-out admissions system they are implementing.
In a spontaneous effort to expose the truth while trying to cheer the deserving people up, I published an opinion piece on my personal profile on Facebook and my personal blog “Mind Soup” discussing the effect of ‘wasta’ and favoritism on decisions made by several departments in AUB while focusing on the recent results of the Medical School acceptances. This opinion article, entitled “There is no ‘wasta’ at the American University of Beirut” raised much more controversy that I have anticipated, and I recieved tons of supporting messages and opposing messages to my personal e-mail address and Facebook inbox. This article has received more than five hundred distinct hits from 17 different countries on the blog alone in two days.
Two days after that, I received what I would like to call a “hate phone-call” from an anonymous private number bashing me for writing the article. I, then, pulled the article down from Facebook and my blog for security reasons, but then put it up again after I received tons of requests from friends who haven’t got the chance to read it.
Tuesday morning, I receive an e-mail from the Align faculty advisor and a personal phone call requesting to see me to discuss some “bad news.” I didn’t think of it very highly and proceeded to work on my INFO 200 project until I had some free time. During that meeting, I was informed that effective immediately, I was fired from Align and no longer hold a “Staff Writer” position. I was told that someone with a high position accessed my personal blog and read the ‘wasta’ article, asked around about me, and requested from the Dean of OSB to lay me off from Align. I was also requested to remove the Align logo and link from my blog. I was being exiled for voicing my opinion on my personal blog which has no relation whatsoever to Align.
In accordance with that, I recieved a formal letter which relieved me from my duty at Align. This letter clearly blamed my ‘firing’ directly to the ‘wasta’ blog post, as follows:
It has come to my attention that you posted an article to your personal blog entitled “There is no ‘wasta’ at the American University of Beirut.” Your blog post does not uphold the spirit that the extended team abides by. […] Consequently, we cannot associate ourselves with writers who heavily criticize the larger institution that ALIGN represents and at the same time promote it in another context because this action lacks internal integrity. Therefore, I regret to inform you that effective immediately you will no longer be a staff writer for ALIGN. […]
It was very clear that this decision was not made by the advisor of Align, but from higher authorities at AUB. For that, I am very appreciative of the whole Align team, and especially its advisor, for the opportunity to be part of such a hard-working team. I sincerely hold no grudge on any of the Align team members, nor the Dean of OSB or any AUB employee that took part of making and implementing this decision.
What seems annoyingly interesting is how these official got hold of my blog and read my article. After some investigations, I was tipped off by a source (who shall remain unnamed) that one premedical student who got accepted to the AUB Medical School got so upset by my opinion piece that he/she directed a highly influential figure in AUB to my blog, who then took this extreme measure. I’m still not sure if this information in one hundred percent accurate, but I would rather not believe that AUB officials stalk students online activities.
This experience has proved pretty much that as much as AUB tries to uphold the Western values, and pretends to give its students the right to freedom of speech, this notion is very doubtful. It is very sad that students have no right to voice their opinions, even using personal means such as Facebook or personal blogs. I am sure that all hell would have broken loose if my article would have been published, as I was considering, in Outlook, AUB’s official student newspaper.
Moreover, I was very grateful for the reaction I immediately recieved from friends and colleagues about this issue. My inbox was flooded with support letters from caring friends and colleagues that made this loss seem much more of a victory than I thought.
I would just like to thank my friends and colleagues for all this support and assure them that I am in no way upset or disappointed for being fired for defending deserving students and voicing the truth. On the contrary, I take this as a huge compliment. My voice was heard by some high official in AUB who got so pissed to the extent that he/she had to hunt me down and fire me for the journalistic integrity that I uphold.
They all know that what I am saying has a huge extent of truth in it, if not completely true. They could have simply caught my bluff and retaliated with a press-release denying my claims (like what have been done on previous occasions), but what they did only makes my point stronger.
They all know that what I am saying has a huge extent of truth in it, if not completely true. They could have simply caught my bluff and retaliated with a press-release denying my claims (like what have been done on previous occasions), but what they did only makes my point stronger.
I consider this unfortunate incident as a blue ribbon on my chest. It pushes me forward to pursue a third major in journalism after I was thinking about it for the last two years. I now know how hard it is for true journalists to make it in real life. If they thought they have shut me up by firing me, they better think again. I am a true journalist now.
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