November 29, 2011

A bullying culture at Sydney Uni?

A bullying culture at Sydney Uni? An understandably anonymous tipster claims bullying of staff and students at the University of Sydney is now so rampant that staff openly seek to garner the support of students in their fight against an "utterly stubborn" management.

They write: "Further, students have been driven to the point of suicide or even attempted suicide at the hands of bullying university staff and the stock university response is to engage its hired legal guns (the Office of General Counsel) to shut the complainants down. Further still, the university's perpetual cash cow, the Business School, is awash with bullying of Chinese students, first through the over-representation of such students in academic dishonesty matters, and again the discriminatory manner in which those students are dealt with when they make special consideration applications due to illness or misadventure. Chinese students are often publicly yelled at by lecturers in the Business School: 'You are in Australia now, do as we do!'"

Are things really that bad? We'd love to hear from more staff and faculty on life on campus. Drop us a line or comment anonymously. boss@crikey.com.au http://www.crikey.com.au/tipoff/

By Anonymous

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well done for keeping going with this blog - particularly as THE regularly remove any post that links to workplace bullying.

I posted twice on a thread about SSU. Carl Baybut had worked at SSU and a couple of years ago committed suicide in part because of the treatment he received from colleagues at the university.

Both posts were removed.

Anonymous said...

I am a researcher in UNSW. I made formal complaint against my supervisor regarding bullying at work place. He yells at me, makes me work when I am on sick leave, over weekends and all through the night. He makes unsavory remarks about me since I am women, threaten me with my job and performance review. Asks me to manipulate data for quick publications. The head of the O&G and my supervisor first deactivated my lab access and asked me not to come to work. Now I am sacked by the management who support him. It includes the head of the O&G, Head of W&CH and of course the Human Resources. I have lodged a complaint with Fair work australia for unfair dismissal. UNSW human resources threatened me to withdraw my complaint. Lets see what happens.