Dear Emily,
There’s been this nagging problem in my head for a long time and I am reaching out to an outsider who can possibly see the whole picture.
My friend and I have been classmates since elementary in a public school. My parents were poor and struggled to support our family. When I reached college, I had to work for my tuition all the way. It took me almost six years to finish my degree.
My friend, however, had grandparents who supported her jobless parents. She graduated in four years, amazingly, with honors. That should have been the end of it, were it not for untruths in her story. All her college requirements were written by someone else who was doing it as a second job.
After graduation, I was immediately offered a job in a company, while my friend languished at home because she couldn’t pass the entrance exams of many companies she applied in. She even failed as a telephone operator because of a speech impediment.
I heard that after five years of being jobless and having kids, she went back to study. When we met again, she told me she was now a department head in a school. She said her grandparents spent money for her master’s degree, then doctoral studies, which she both finished “with honors.”
Since we held no secrets from each other, she whispered that the person who did her college papers wrote her master’s and doctoral theses as well, for a huge fee. I was in shock because I remember she couldn’t even write a decent paragraph in English. How could she have duped her bosses in this school?
I felt bad and almost wished my parents had some of her money so I didn’t have to work so hard.
If I were malicious, I should be reporting what I know about this fraud to the concerned authorities. I’ve read how you often referred to karma in your previous columns. Does that really work?
Tolerating fraud
You’re not just being jealous, are you, that despite your hard work, it’s your friend’s fraud that is taking her to high places?
Do you worry that the school didn’t do its due diligence in hiring her? Didn’t they have a panel of experts who would have quizzed her, even split hairs on her “knowledge” of her dissertation? Are you agonizing that the school might have been negligent by not even peeking at its content, and just considered it gospel truth—having been submitted by someone they trusted completely?
But it’s a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t scenario. If you report her, your conscience will be relentless in making you feel horrific should she be kicked out of that school. If you stay quiet, your conscience will be as relentless in pushing you to do it.
It is common knowledge that these alleged shenanigans are actually prevalent among the so-called diploma mill universities in the country.
But can you imagine yourself going to the president or dean of the school and divulging this little secret and creating a huge scandal involving your friend? What if you do and the school investigates her credentials and proves she’s really qualified? That would put to rest your anxiety over her fraud, despite the awkwardness that’ll surely ensue.
But if she is really a rotten apple, truth would have prevailed, but you would have lost a friend and she’d have lost her livelihood. You’ll never be a winner here.
Karma is simply a law in physics that states, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Whether you believe in it or not, or however you call it, it’s happening!
I wouldn’t worry too much about the fraud committed by your friend. It’s her own lookout. As they say, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
Do what you think is kind. And let the pieces fall where they may.
E-mail the author at emarcelo@inquirer.com.ph or emarcelo[email protected]
