Everyone at school mocked me for my anxiety disorder

Building the Case for Justice

That night back in my dorm, I couldn’t stop thinking about everything. I opened my laptop to email disability services about getting help. The coffee had killed it completely, so I used my phone instead.

I typed out a message to Mave Lee, explaining that I needed an emergency meeting about accommodations. My finger hovered over the send button for a full minute before I pressed it.

She wrote back in less than an hour saying she could see me first thing in the morning. She marked my case as urgent in the system.

I lay in bed staring at the ceiling while everything that happened played over and over in my head. The next morning came too fast and I dragged myself out of bed with maybe two hours of sleep total.

My phone showed Mave’s confirmation for our 9:00 meeting and I threw on clean clothes without really looking at them. The walk to the disability services office took me past the economics building and my stomach twisted into knots.

Inside Mave’s office, she had tissues on the table and a notepad ready while I sat down and started explaining what happened in class. My voice shook when I described the coffee being poured on my stuff and the chunk of hair they cut off.

She wrote everything down and her face got more and more upset as I talked about how the war sounds triggered my panic attack.

When I finished, she pulled out a folder and started showing me different accommodation options the school could provide. She explained I could get permission to record lectures so I wouldn’t have to take notes while my hands shook.

There were quiet testing rooms available where I could take exams without the bright lights and noise that reminded me of explosions. She typed up the accommodation letter right there and said she’d send it to all my professors today.

Her hand touched my shoulder gently when she walked me to the door and told me to email her anytime I needed help.

Two days later, I forced myself to go back to economics class because I couldn’t let them win by making me drop out. Professor Mitchell stood at the front and looked right at me when I walked in.

He didn’t say my name but started talking about how certain students couldn’t handle academic pressure and caused disruptions for everyone else. The other students turned to stare at me and started whispering to each other, loud enough that I could hear pieces about the crazy refugee kid.

Someone behind me kept tapping their pen on the desk in a rhythm that sounded like gunfire. My notebook stayed closed because my hands were shaking too bad to write anything down.

Professor Mitchell kept making comments about diversity admits who didn’t belong in real universities. Halfway through the class, I stood up and walked out while everyone watched.

Back in my dorm, I opened my laptop and started typing out everything that had happened since the semester started. The document filled up fast with dates and exact quotes from Professor Mitchell’s comments about refugees and mental illness.

I wrote down the names of every student who participated in the abuse and what they did. The timeline went back weeks with smaller incidents I’d tried to ignore before they got worse.

Each entry had specific details about who was there and what they saw happen. The list got longer than I expected and seeing it all written out made the pattern impossible to deny.

My fingers kept typing for hours as I remembered more incidents and added them with careful notes about witnesses. Three days went by while I stared at that document and tried to decide what to do with it.

Part of me wanted to just switch to another section quietly and avoid the whole mess. But then I remembered surviving the attack on my village and living through the refugee camp and writing my book while everything burned around me.

I opened the university website and found the institutional equity office page with Carol McKenzie’s contact information. My mouse hovered over the appointment link for a long time before I clicked it and selected the first available slot.

The confirmation email came through right away and my anxiety spiked but I told myself I’d survived worse than this.

Carol’s office had certificates on the wall and a recording device on the desk when I walked in for my appointment. She asked me to start from the beginning and took notes on her computer while I talked through the whole pattern of discrimination.

Her questions were specific about dates and witnesses and she wanted exact quotes when I could remember them. She pulled up a document explaining the investigation process and my rights during it, including protection from any retaliation.

When I mentioned the guest speaker who witnessed everything and recognized me from the refugee camp, her eyes got wide. She asked if I had his contact information and I gave her the paper he’d written his number on.

That evening my phone buzzed with an unknown number and the text said it was Omar Santiago from the campus newspaper. He’d heard something big happened in Mitchell’s class and wanted to talk off the record if I was willing.

We met at the coffee shop in the student center where other people were around for safety. Omar pulled out a notebook and told me he’d been investigating complaints about Professor Mitchell for months.

Three other students had come to him with stories but none of them wanted to go on record because they were scared. He showed me his notes without names and the pattern matched exactly what I’d experienced.

We agreed to share information carefully and he gave me his encrypted email address for anything sensitive.

The next morning, I woke up to an email from Franklin Doyle, who was the department chair for economics. He wrote that he’d heard I was having difficulties in Professor Mitchell’s section and wanted to offer me a transfer to another professor with no penalty.

His tone was professional, but there was something underneath that felt like he wanted this to go away quietly. I typed back that I appreciated the offer but I wanted to stay in my registered class with proper accommodations and protection from discrimination.

Twenty minutes later he replied, asking for a meeting to discuss the situation further. While I was reading his email, another message came through from Carol saying the guest speaker had sent his statement.

She forwarded me a copy and it was three pages of detailed description about what he witnessed in the classroom. He included documentation from the refugee camp showing when he met me and copies of his emails to World Bank officials about my economic framework.

The statement used professional language to describe the abuse, but you could feel his anger through the careful words.

Carol started her investigation by contacting students from the class and asking for their accounts of what happened. Her email to me said several students had already agreed to provide statements anonymously about what they saw.

Some of them felt guilty for not stopping it and wanted to help make things right now. Their statements matched mine about the coffee and the hair cutting and Professor Mitchell encouraging the abuse.

One student even had photos on their phone from when I was having the panic attack.

I logged into the course website to check my grades and found something that made my jaw drop. Professor Mitchell had entered failing grades for assignments that weren’t even due yet.

The submission boxes were still closed, but somehow I had zeros for papers nobody had turned in yet. I took screenshots of everything immediately, showing the dates and the closed submission status.

Carol’s response when I sent them was just two words, but I could feel her satisfaction through the screen.

The next morning, Mave sent an official email to Professor Mitchell about my approved accommodations for class. She copied the entire economics department on it and attached all the paperwork from disability services.

The email listed everything clearly, including extra time for tests, permission to step out if needed, and the right to record lectures. Mitchell’s reply came back within an hour and it was only three lines long.

He wrote that he would comply with all legal requirements as mandated by the university. The way he phrased it made it sound like he was forced at gunpoint. Mave forwarded his response to Carol and added a note saying she’d seen this pattern before with him.

Two days later, I was eating lunch in the campus cafeteria when someone dropped their metal tray right behind me. The crash sent me straight into panic mode and my whole body started shaking.

My breathing got fast and shallow while everyone in the cafeteria turned to stare at me. But instead of running away like I usually did, I remembered what Mave taught me about grounding exercises.

I put my hands flat on the table and counted five things I could see, then four things I could touch. My breathing slowed down bit by bit while I stayed in my seat. After about three minutes, I was calm enough to finish my sandwich.

It wasn’t much, but staying there instead of fleeing felt like winning a small battle. That same afternoon, Omar’s article came out in the campus newspaper about discrimination in certain departments.

He didn’t name Mitchell directly but anyone who knew the situation could tell who he meant. The piece talked about refugee students facing hostile classroom environments and professors who made comments about their backgrounds.

Within hours, the article was shared all over campus social media. Students started commenting with their own stories about similar experiences. The economics department suddenly had a lot more eyes on it.

Walking to the library the next day, one of the students from Mitchell’s class stepped right in front of me. He grabbed my backpack strap and yanked me backward while telling me I was making trouble for everyone.

His face was red and he kept poking me in the chest, saying I should drop the complaint. Two campus security officers happened to be walking by and saw the whole thing.

They separated us immediately and took both our statements right there on the sidewalk. The student tried to say we were just talking, but the officers wrote down that he’d grabbed me.

They gave me a copy of their incident report and said it would be filed with the main security office. Carol called me that evening to say she’d gotten the security report already.

She also told me she’d interviewed Mitchell that afternoon about my allegations. He apparently spent the whole interview talking about maintaining academic standards and managing classroom disruptions.

He claimed I was too sensitive and couldn’t handle normal academic pressure. Carol said his explanations sounded weak when she compared them to all the witness statements she’d collected. She mentioned he seemed nervous and kept asking what evidence she had.

The next morning, Omar texted me that someone had leaked an email to him. Mitchell had sent it to other economics professors last semester, complaining about diversity admits and refugee students.

In the email, he wrote that these students lowered the quality of education for everyone else. He also made jokes about their English skills and suggested they shouldn’t be admitted at all.

Omar verified it was real by checking with his sources in the I.T. department. He published excerpts from it in a follow-up article that afternoon. The administration couldn’t pretend they didn’t know about the pattern anymore.

Franklin called me into his office that same day to suggest mediation between Mitchell and me. He said it would be faster than a formal investigation and might help us both move forward.

I told him no immediately and explained that mediation only works when both people have equal power. Mitchell controlled my grades and my academic future while I had nothing.

Franklin seemed surprised by my answer but said he understood my position. Carol later told me she was glad I refused and made a note about it in my file.

When I got back to my dorm that night, there was a folded paper under my door. Another refugee student had written to say they knew what I was going through.

They shared their own story about facing discrimination from Mitchell two years ago. They said they’d been too scared to report it, but seeing me stand up gave them hope.

The note was anonymous but they included details that matched other complaints Carol had mentioned. I scanned it and sent it to her as more evidence of the pattern.

She replied saying:

“This showed the problem affected more students than just me.”

The campus legal aid clinic gave me a free consultation the next week about my rights. The lawyer there explained I had grounds for both a university complaint and possibly a civil case.

She went through all my options, including filing with the state human rights commission if needed. Having legal options made me feel less trapped in the situation.

She gave me her card and said to call if things got worse.

Before leaving, I gave Carol a U.S.B. drive with audio recordings from Mitchell’s classes. I’d been recording them on my phone to help with notetaking because of my accommodations.

The recordings happened to catch several of his discriminatory comments, including the one about charity cases. Carol’s eyes got wide when she listened to a sample of them.

She confirmed these were admissible evidence since the syllabus said students could record lectures. The evidence against Mitchell kept growing every day.