Monday 13 August 2012

A Gallant addition to these pages...

Just last month I received another nomination for the HCT’s ever-lengthening Hall of Shame. Perhaps HCT should open its very own ‘Faculty of Dishonesty’ to accommodate them all?

***

One person who disgusts many people is Dr Monica Gallant, the head of the business department at Dubai Women's College. I once overheard her trying to convince a student to not drop out. This student had been interested in taking Tourism and Event Management courses, even though they are not in fact offered. The college website lists Tourism and Event Management as a major, but no courses have been offered, due to insufficient enrolment. Monica told the student that Tourism and Event Management courses would be offered in the following semester, and the student should continue to attend college. In truth, the program had already been scrapped. No more courses - at all. Period. The information on the website is, in fact, mere window-dressing. Or rather, a pack of lies. However, Monica still tried to 'sell' the non-existent program, forcefully and aggressively. You would have thought she was selling a used car.

A recurring problem in the business school is plagiarism. Students at DWC plagiarize papers to get passing grades without doing the required work. Many students have poor English-speaking and writing skills, and will turn in these purchased papers. Monica's brilliant solution was to tell the faculty to pretend that a fictional 'review committee' existed. She asked faculty members to tell students that this fake 'review committee' would not accept a plagiarized assignment. The faculty, however, refused to employ institutional dishonesty to tackle student dishonesty. Monica clearly lacks integrity, and was genuinely surprised that faculty refused to go along with her fabrication.

She's like ‘Miss Piggy’ at ADWC - porcine, delusional, self-absorbed, over-aggressive, and ambitious to an absurd degree. She is more concerned about how other administrators perceive her than she is in doing an ethical, effective job. However, unlike Miss Piggy, Monica is creepy, dishonest to faculty and students, has stringy greasy hair, and tells lies to save her bacon (pardon the pun).

***

So there you have it - another fine example of HCT's 'management muck'. Do you have your own favorite management tyrant, stool pigeon, or lickspittle to nominate? Don't hold back there!

UPDATE: I received an important addition to the story of life at DWC just today. Enjoy this one too!

DWC's Business faculty are expected to 'teach' students through pointless socializing activities like games and field trips to the shopping mall, and maybe a guest speaker, as long as he/she is entertaining. This reminds many of us of Mary Poppins - a trip to the park, visit Dad at the bank, visit an old person, sing a few songs, play some games, and then have a dance with a chimney sweep. Yet at HCT, the nanny, Mary Poppins, needs to have a PhD, or at least a Masters degree or two.

However, the worst thing about the place is that the students know that they can complain to the head of the department and swiftly get the faculty member into trouble. The students will outrgeously lie doing this, and get away with it easily. The head of the department, our dear Monica, believes these unethical girls at their word and will reprimand a business faculty member without a second thought. She hates for a problem to go to the Dean or the School Director, and will do anything to not look bad in front of these two morons.

The Student Counselor, Fatma Thani, is odious. Actually she is the Supervisor of Student Affairs at DWC, but she's just a stool pigeon who works for the head scumballs in Abu Dhabi. She's an Emirati, of course, and always assumes that her little darlings aren't treated well enough by the mean Western teachers. The administrators go poo poo in their pants when she's involved, mainly because of her contacts in Abu Dhabi.  She seems to run the place by way of threat. She is pure evil.