You have to laugh. You do. Really. The alternative is crying. Trina Thompson a graduate of Monroe College in the Bronx is apparently sueing her former college because she couldn’t get a job. “They have not tried hard enough to help me,” she wails in her lawsuit.
Poor little sausage. Finding a job by herself is obviously all too much for her. Welcome to the real world Trina. Perhaps anyone who has ever had an education could also sue if they can’t find a job. After all… God forbid that anyone anywhere should ever have to take responsibility for their own life. Whatever next?
I am all for colleges helping their students try to get a job, but to hold the college responsible when the student can’t find one they like? Give me a break.
It seems Thompson wants her $70,000 tuition refunded. I assume she will, of course, return her bachelor’s degree and sign an affidavit that she’ll never try to use it in the future. Or is this another fine example of someone wanting something for nothing?
No degree means a life of flipping burgers or such but that’s a small price to pay for getting the tuition back.
Lawyers will take anything to court of course. They don’t care – they’ll get paid either way. But as Thompson is already complaining about mounting debt from student loans I can’t help thinking that sueing wasn’t the smartest move in the playbook.
As someone once said – If you can’t get what you want, you have to take what you can get.
I don’t even know the word for how stupid this lawsuit is. I laughed out loud that she should give her degree back if she’s suing for her tuition back…
I have known some lovely lawyers and I’m related to one, even. But sometimes that old saying about “First kill all the lawyers,” comes to mind, n’est pas?
Who said that anyway?
I like your blog and points of view.
Shakespeare in King Henry VI takes the credit for that quote I believe. “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers…”
Maybe this is just what kind of things begin to happen in a society that is not really free and which has it’s ideals chiefly imposed by external mechanisms.
I mean, let’s look at some ideas that are pretty much accepted as “ideals”.
1) Take for instance educational standards. These are established with the idea of producing a product line useful to preexisting business models in preexisting corporate structures. And all the people said amen, this is good and will help us all.
2) Now combine the “you must go to college to be anything” theme with the
3) welfare mentality that has also become established in this country by govt aid and protection and favors to selected groups from citizens to megacorps (seems to always translate into “govt control of something” and a bigger budget naturally for your good)
4) add in a rampancy of trial suit lawyers for who the courts will award cases suing for whimsical reasons (i.e. the hot coffee burned me), and you’ve got the oven ready to for something like this lawsuit which among other things, exhibits the sad laming, not the empowering of humanity.
I guess I’ll allow that maybe there is a point to be made and colleges DO advertise as if going there is really going to set students up for a job and sometimes colleges are behind the curve and end up producing too many products for the job market they’ve sold courses for.
But geesh, what a tart!
Of course as a manufacturer if you make too many widgets, you’re stuck with your widgets so you oughta be careful. A school has already been paid for it’s widgets and therefore doesn’t have so much incentive to be careful about producing what society will use.
Hmmm…truth in advertising? I mean, you aren’t allowed to label or advertise an herb as having health benefits without extensive testing to back the claim but colleges are free to lead you to believe going there will virtually put you into your dream job. And of course minty gum will get and keep you that dream date.
Nonetheless, the blame game that has become so popular in this country isn’t getting us anywhere meaningful, besides maybe, eventually, tired enough of it to begin to move beyond it and to think creatively, not destructively and defensively, as a people, for a change. Oh, wouldn’t that be refreshing? Maybe it would feel a little scary at first because of conditioning to follow what the narrowly focused ‘experts’ have decided we know, but it seems it would be refreshing if people felt less threatened about and actually enjoyed using their noggins.
“Don’t criticize, create.”
Jackson Browne
Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” is a long but great read on creators and the blame game.