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From: D. Stan, PhD Student
Date:30/11/97
If you are of the opinion that your supervisor is not doing his job properly, you must first tell him so to his face. When you've plucked up courage to say 'excuse me, Mr Brown, may I just point out that you're a piss-poor supervisor', the next avenue of complaint is the person who hired and was supposed to have trained him, the Dean. Armageddon's new 'Internal Complaints Procedure' is extremely useful in this regard. It helps to internalise complaints and keep them quiet. This is how it goes: The complainant/trouble-maker is called to the Dean's office where they are made at home, the wool pulled over their eyes and lots of informal promises made. that normally shuts up most people, but, if they complain further, the Dean calls them into his office again and lays down the law and does a heavy act routine. 'It's your word against mine' is a particularly effective put-down. Should the complaint go further, it is put into a big filing cabinet by the Assistant Registrar and left to fester for a while. If the complainant is still kicking up a fuss, you try to but them off with a big cheque. If that doesn't work, you call them into a scary meeting with the Director of Graduate Studies and the Academic Registrar. As an added precaution you only let them bring one friend so they are outnumbered, and you don't allow any minutes to be taken. That way you can deny something you didn't mean to say. You then delay for a while longer so that everyone will forget what was said. Finally, you offer them even more money, tell them that is the end of the matter and give tem a biro to sign their life away.
From: Robin Leslie(Ph.D./LSE)
Date: 04 Mar 2003
Through all the suicides of countless academics,breakdowns,lost relationships;Who was culpable.Previous events,viz. the burning of Heidelburg library,with losses of precious manuscripts, show that academics vandalise their own institutions,with a little bit of help.....