I know disciplinary action has been widely discussed on here, but I had trouble finding anything about what to do if one actually fails to report it. My freshman year some friends and I were walking back to dorms when a campus safety officer yelled, "hey stop!" at us. It's an urban campus and we were sort of jumpy I guess, so we scattered momentarily. After we were brought in and interrogated, it was discovered that we had done nothing wrong except for the initial scattering. I was asked to write a letter of apology, and I assumed that was it. In all honesty, I did not think that I had anything on my record when I applied. My GPA is 3.6 and my MCAT is a 32 from a top tier school. I have recently gotten a couple of emails from schools that have obtained my record asking me to explain the incident and why I didn't report it. My questions are: how in depth I should explain the situation, should I be honest and say that I assumed I had nothing on my record, and how badly does this hurt my chances for medical school?
Failure to Report Disciplinary Action
- Thread starter Nwahle
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So campus security yelled stop...and you ran? Thats it??? There has got to be more to it...did I miss something?
And if that is really all that happened....say that is all that happened. Did you guys run......and then he found the roach you guys just smoked in your pocket....or did he find it after you guys chucked it. Its okay.....
And if that is really all that happened....say that is all that happened. Did you guys run......and then he found the roach you guys just smoked in your pocket....or did he find it after you guys chucked it. Its okay.....
In all honesty, I am. We ran a very short distance away. There had been some sort of incident on campus and the officers were stopping us to ask about it. We panicked, and it became a larger issue. We were not found guilty of anything else and there is nothing else on my record, legal or academic, besides this failure to comply. I realize, as I am a very cynical person, that this looks weird. Believe me if we had been doing anything else wrong we would have been punished for it as running away is probably the most obvious sign of guilt. Your responses are actually making me a little more stressed out as now I think that the adcoms will think I am covering something up as well.
There's nothing you can change now about it. Be upfront about it and explain that you mistakenly forgot to mention it because you didn't feel that an official disciplinary action had occured against you. Additionally, update the rest of the school that you applied to that there is an action against you along with the same (well, similarly worded) explaination that you are sending to the schools asking about it.
If you tell the story in the way you told it in your first post, you're certainly going to get responses like the one avksx gave. It's natural; that story just doesn't seem to hold water. I don't know you personally, but I believe you now that I read the extra information. Be forthright, be concise, but don't send anything in like what you posted that first time-- no one will believe you.
Good luck!
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First, find out what your disciplinary record actually has on it. You should be entitled to see it for yourself although the school may give you a hard time at first. Secondly, if what you say is true find out why there is anything on there at all.
Once you have that info your consider wisely your next move...
Once you have that info your consider wisely your next move...
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Why does everyone think failure to comply with police orders seems to be a BS story hiding something more significant? To the OP, I think your not having committed a serious offense is corroborated by your failure to report, and you can write letters to the schools apologizing for the oversight and pointing out that you were found to have done no wrong. Mentioning that you were in an urban area and panicked when someone told you to stop could justify the original running from police. Putting your finding of total innocence in plain terms will be the most important part of the email/letter. I do agree with above posters' notes to update other schools since it is likely other schools will also find this out. If you write well and respond quickly I don't think this will hurt...why should it?!
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Wow...do schools really put IAs on students w/o notifying them?!
Almost makes me wonder if I should check whether I got an IA for the time our campus security fought w/ my boss over a local security issue b/c I acted in the best interests of the students under my care (and in accordance w/ departmental policy) instead of going by the desires of a student worker. lol.... campus security... what a joke.
Almost makes me wonder if I should check whether I got an IA for the time our campus security fought w/ my boss over a local security issue b/c I acted in the best interests of the students under my care (and in accordance w/ departmental policy) instead of going by the desires of a student worker. lol.... campus security... what a joke.
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of course the op is gonna panic if a cso comes running up to him. everyone feels like that when cops/guards/whatever are around. even if he wasnt doing anything wrong, there was a possibility that he could have gotten in trouble for some bs reason. since there were a bunch of people in his group and only one cso, running was probably a pretty good idea at the time.
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No it wasn't. Running gives them an instant ticket to apprehend and question you.
Even if you're carrying 6 oz of pot in your pocket you shouldn't run. Let them approach you, clearly and assertively tell them "I'm not interested in talking to you" and walk away. By law all they can do is ask you for your name and adress. They can not interrogate, search or withhold you without probable cause.
If you ever run into the law, stay calm and keep your mouth shut, and you'll come out clear every time. It's idiotic to rationalize running from the police.
The natural response for most people when being asked to stop by a policeman or police-like figure is to do as asked. I myself have been pulled over once for speeding and it never once crossed my mind to jam the gas and escape. People usually don't risk the extra trouble they could get into if they had nothing to hide by running for this exact reason. It sounds like he thought that the police may have suspected him in something else which was his motivation to run.
I was saying that his first post didn't describe any motivation. No one just runs from the police for fun unless they are mentally deficient. Once he said that there was a previous disturbance on campus, I realized the motivation and believed the story.
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To be fair, a CSO is not a police officer. Of course school policy can require obedience to CSOs which, while having no legal consequence, can cause issues with school records.
In hindsight it was absolutely idiotic to run. In the letter I apologized for the oversight and assured them it was due to ignorance, not attempted self-preservation. I then summarized the incident, noting my embarrassment. To conclude I wrote honestly about how it was foolish to waste the time of the officers and cause them unnecessary stress as there is a great deal of serious crime in the city. I also wrote them a letter of apology immediately after then incident. I'll mail it in tomorrow, and I appreciate your help everyone. I'll just hope for the best, or at the worst try again next year, correcting the mistake
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First, not all campus security are equivalent to police. Second, as a female I have been told in seminars presented by law enforcement officers more than once to be concerned about people approaching me claiming to be police officers, even in official-looking uniforms. When I was in undergrad (and it has been a while) there were a string of rapes and murders involving people disguised as law officers. Even now, if I am not in a safe, well lit place, and an officer in an official looking police vehicle tries to pull me over, I procede to the nearest operating gas station/grocery store/fire department/police station. I do not have blind faith that a random stranger shouting at me to do anything has authority over me. I am not saying that it was right or wrong in this situation (I have hit 'panic points' on a campus in the same situation, though, and I suppose it could have been considered running from campus security....to campus security.)
I do not know if there is more to the OP's story or not, but I would be having a meeting with someone who can change that at my undergrad, if it is that basic.
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OP, you should be able to get a copy of the incident report--it may back up your version of what happened.
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I'm missing the relevance here. How do these anecdotes and isolated incidences even relate to the subject?
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The relevance is that alot of people on this thread thing campus security is the same thing as the police. On some campuses, that is true; campus security is provided in conjunction with local law officers, on other campuses security is provided by private firms, or individuals hired by the campus, or even by students hired by the campus. That means that 'running from the police' may not even be a valid discussion, as others pointed out. The other relevance is assuming someone in uniform is harmless and has you or the communities best interest/welfare in mind is blindly foolish; that assuming running = stupied is assuming person in uniform = safe. False logic. The relating of the anecdotes can help articulate why one would run from an individual in uniform.
Either way, the OP will have to find out what the incident report says and is probably best off discussing it with the institution where it occured, figuring out why it is on his record (because being part of an incident report should not be part of an academic record...another step had to occur for that to happen, otherwise anyone who was a victim of a crime on campus would also have it as part of their academic record) and whether it can be removed. If it isn't a big deal to do, he can then present that to the schools that are now asking about it; it would show that the school didn't really consider it that serious. The only other option is to explain that the OP wasn't aware of it and detail why and what happened. In either case, he will still need to know what the incident report says and what the schools are seeing. I would have assumed there would have been a more formal process for putting something on someone's record; there was at my school. If I couldn't get it removed, and there isn't a formal notification that it goes on the record, I would ask for a letter to that affect from the school to suggest why I wasn't aware of it.
So, relevance was simply that there ARE reasons to not blindly do as someone in a uniform says because the health and well-being of others has been harmed by doing so, and the next step is figuring out just what hte details of this mess are and communicating with the undergrad and the med schools.
