My US Medical School is failing me for the year based on false allegations that I falsified clinical hours.
LOCATION: California
I go to a public medical school in California. We are required to attend a randomly assigned clinic for the entirety of medical school and log hours on a website. Those hours are verified by the physician preceptor at the clinic and the school at the end of each quarter. All of my hours were verified by both at the end of each quarter.
There have been issues with the randomly assigned physician preceptor since the beginning of medical school because he is racist and homophobic. He had his medical license previously revoked upon stay due to inappropriate conduct, overprescribing, poor record keeping etc. Anyways, even though he was racist / homophobic / horrible to be around, I did not report him for this because when I previously complained about him for communication issues and asked to switch sites, the school told him I complained, and the preceptor chewed me out.
Anyways, fast forward to a few months ago. He made a particularly graphic homophobic joke / story to me in front of everybody including other students. This made me very uncomfortable, especially because i’m not out to everyone (conservative parents), so later on I expressed to the preceptor that I don’t appreciate that and if he does it again, I’ll have to report him. The next thing I know, he wrote a letter to the school that for the past two years, I was racist / a bad student / don’t show up to clinic etc, even though all of his feedback towards me has been positive until now and he has verified all of my clinical hours.
Based solely on that letter, my grades were retroactively changed from pass to fail for the year and I am facing disciplinary action. I was not told about the letter or why I failed until after I was failed. I am currently trying to appeal, but the process takes several months and the next school year starts in a few weeks. Even if I win, I will lose a year of my life. Please advise me. If anyone can recommend a good lawyer for this, plz pm. Thank you so much.