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To: Fuller Seminary Registrar
Stop Fuller Seminary from Failing a Black Woman Student for Its Own Error and Neglect
Because Fuller Seminary's Student Financial Services Department failed to provide Kareena Kirlew’s financial aid award letter within 24 hours but instead took 18 calendar days, while also providing no reason for having created such a delay, Fuller’s Registrar needs to supply Kareena with an additional academic quarter to access and engage in the courses she has paid for, subject to no missing marks - namely, participation - or late penalties as a result of this error. Fuller's Registrar needs to bypass professor approval for this extension due to administrative and institutional error.
Why is this important?
1. This is retaliation for having raised a rent issue at Fuller Seminary in late 2019/early 2020. The issue regarding income-based rents went up to Fuller's senior administration, which decided not to address the issue of rent but to threaten me with not receiving my financial aid. Now, in the first quarter since that event, they've made good on that threat. The Student Financial Services Department simply did not process my financial aid for the Spring 2021 quarter until my advisor and I raised the issue. Fuller is aiming to send unjust and inaccurate failing grades to its academic review board for my dismissal. As a member of Fuller's student community, I have done nothing to justify the violence being carried out against me except be a Black woman in a single- and very-low-income household, which Fuller apparently has no time or space for.
2. It is not acceptable for a Christian seminary to threaten or retaliate against its students for any reason, at any time, anywhere. Any religious institution (Fuller Seminary being far from exempt) exacting harm and violence in any form is engaging in spiritual abuse. This must end.
3. When a restaurant makes an error on your food order, what happens? More than likely, that restaurant takes the incorrect order back with an apology, and provides you with a new, correct order, and perhaps a refund. They correct their error to your satisfaction sans the inconvenience they have caused you. There is nothing common, sensible, right, ethical or just about Fuller failing to process my financial aid, fully taking away my access to two courses (no laptop, no textbooks and no access accommodations), and then making me entirely responsible for that failure.
4. No other student who attends Fuller and relies on financial aid, should be made to accept the failing grades and negative consequences of the administration failing to operate efficiently and according to its own stated policy (24 hours for a financial aid award letter, not nearly 3 weeks and not 30 days). Routinizing neglect and error without ownership, responsibility or accountability, is unacceptable and is certainly not the standard or expectation of students paying thousands of dollars for an education.
5. The institution of Fuller is all too eager to constantly place Black students in positions of academic failure and trauma, rather than of academic success and flourishing. Having operational standards that entirely neglect and fail to serve Black students whilst those students pay service fees and tuition is racist, exploitative robbery.
Simply put, Fuller Theological Seminary needs to take responsibility for its error and make it right. I have not earned failing grades; rather, Fuller has withheld my financial aid processing, keeping me from earning ANY grades for several weeks!
Fuller must: 1) process a full academic quarter's extension for the two courses made inaccessible to me, 2) authorize full marks for all course grades available, namely participation, and 3) bypass professor approval for this quarter extension, as professor approval/disapproval is inappropriate in instances of administrative and institutional error.
2. It is not acceptable for a Christian seminary to threaten or retaliate against its students for any reason, at any time, anywhere. Any religious institution (Fuller Seminary being far from exempt) exacting harm and violence in any form is engaging in spiritual abuse. This must end.
3. When a restaurant makes an error on your food order, what happens? More than likely, that restaurant takes the incorrect order back with an apology, and provides you with a new, correct order, and perhaps a refund. They correct their error to your satisfaction sans the inconvenience they have caused you. There is nothing common, sensible, right, ethical or just about Fuller failing to process my financial aid, fully taking away my access to two courses (no laptop, no textbooks and no access accommodations), and then making me entirely responsible for that failure.
4. No other student who attends Fuller and relies on financial aid, should be made to accept the failing grades and negative consequences of the administration failing to operate efficiently and according to its own stated policy (24 hours for a financial aid award letter, not nearly 3 weeks and not 30 days). Routinizing neglect and error without ownership, responsibility or accountability, is unacceptable and is certainly not the standard or expectation of students paying thousands of dollars for an education.
5. The institution of Fuller is all too eager to constantly place Black students in positions of academic failure and trauma, rather than of academic success and flourishing. Having operational standards that entirely neglect and fail to serve Black students whilst those students pay service fees and tuition is racist, exploitative robbery.
Simply put, Fuller Theological Seminary needs to take responsibility for its error and make it right. I have not earned failing grades; rather, Fuller has withheld my financial aid processing, keeping me from earning ANY grades for several weeks!
Fuller must: 1) process a full academic quarter's extension for the two courses made inaccessible to me, 2) authorize full marks for all course grades available, namely participation, and 3) bypass professor approval for this quarter extension, as professor approval/disapproval is inappropriate in instances of administrative and institutional error.