My Professor was Dismissed During My Residency, and Capella is Doing...Nothing?
I want to share this experience because I fear the school might try to sweep this under the rug, and I refuse to let that happen after seeing how affected my classmates were by this experience.
For Context, I am in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Master's Course and had to attend Residency in Rosen Creek, Florida. A student in my session asked our *new* professor if we could talk about this, and she said yes, so I thought I would share an abbreviated version of the story.
So....
The professor is an older white man. The professor would often get distracted from the topic by telling non-sequitur stories about his past experiences, his political beliefs, or his personal life. This would be a common theme throughout the entire residency. While stories are expected in a group setting, his sharing often took 20-30 minutes and left little time to cover any counseling topics.
I will admit that there were many times during these stories that the professor would become confusing to listen to, too quiet to hear over the loud Air Conditioning system, or I would start to become bored with the lecture. Despite this, I have many examples of conversations and statements that the professor made that made me and my fellow students uncomfortable.
Let me preface this with: This list is not in any particular order. It is as I remembered them. In addition, some of these were just conversation topics that I believe should not have been brought up by the professor in a professional setting.
Here's a list:
-Made many different comments about troubles with his marriage or hating his wife. (Not especially inappropriate, but not an appropriate topic of discussion during residency)
-Complained about how gender-neutral terms such as 'birthing parent' and non-birthing parent were ridiculous and should never be used and are offensive to 'normal' people.
-"That's alright, the Romanis are always late."
-"Don't worry, we will have you blond-haired and blue-eyed by the end of the week." (Spoken to a Female Black Student).
-A story about a black student who had brought his favorite foods to school (pointedly stating these foods were 'probably fried chicken and watermelon') and then presented them to the professor while saying "This is for you Master," with an accent.
-Talking about a school where he used to work, stating that he knew the school was heading downhill because he looked at the statistics and noted that the population had become only 7% white. And that 'we should all know what that means'.
-Talked about how women are always the cause of abuse, citing research that stated that ,male gay couples are less likely to abuse each other than straight couples and that lesbian couples have the highest rates of abuse.
-Brought up the events of 9/11 multiple times, attempting to talk about his political beliefs surrounding this event.
-Asked a transsexual student to be the client in a therapy session the professor conducted, telling them to draw on their life experience, in front of the entire class. (This is potentially very triggering).
-He detailed a conversation he had with a black student where the student described how Jewish people had suffered more in slavery than black people had. And that, as a result, black people should 'stop complaining about racism and slavery' when it was not as impactful to them as it was on Jewish people.
Now for the incident that ACTUALLY got him dismissed(?) (we hope?):
The Professor would have us do role-plays where the student acted as a counselor, and the professor served as the client. In these sessions, the professor would often depict characters 'authentically'. For example, when he portrayed a Korean student, he had broken English and an accent. When he portrayed a Dominican woman, it was the same scenario.
In this incident, he was portraying a client in a role-play who was a student who refused to attend his English class because his teacher was Black. During the scenario, the following was stated:
-The Black teacher was only hired as a means to fill a diversity quota.
-The Black teacher was only pretending to act white; when she got home, she would talk 'stupid' and 'black' again. (Putting on an accent to emphasize this point)
-The Black teacher was making him read books that couldn't teach anything because they were by 'Blacks' and 'Jews'
-The client had a father who was implied to be taking part in meetings with the KKK.
-The client had an uncle who was the head of a white supremacist group in prison.
-The client had a brother who was gay (called a 'f****t') and was kicked out of his home. The client stated this brother deserved to die and be beaten up because of his sexual orientation.
-The client believed that all Hispanics were illegal and should be beaten and killed.
-The client believed that if Black students attempted to sit with him or talk to him, he should be allowed to beat them or k*ll them after school.
During these statements, the Professor used uncensored slurs to emphasize his points.
We have not been trained on how to work with this type of client, and the professor did not provide any insight as to how to handle this kind of scenario in the future.
He WAS removed from the class on the 4th day (when 2 hours were remaining), but we have heard no further word as to how this will be handled. We were all given an A on our in-person counseling assessment by our replacement, but that doesn't give back our time and money from this 5-DAY RESIDENCY.
How has he been teaching this long? How was he allowed to lead a residency?
I spent thousands of dollars on Tuition, flights, and the Hotel to be a part of this experience, and all I learned was how to be a racist and get fired.