Where to begin?
Long story short, I experienced bullying/attacks based on nationality and cultural identity during my PhD program. Strangely enough, there were a total of 23 people in the class, and 17 of us collectively faced malicious behavior from three individuals. It sounds absurd that such blatant bullying could exist in a psychology graduate program; anyone hearing this would say, "this should be high school shits!"
Each of our experiences was different. Some faced more direct verbal or behavioral attacks, while others suffered from various unprofessional behaviors in class, including but not limited to: rolling eyes, mocking laughter, whispering, texting during others' speeches or presentations, refusing to participate in group discussions while indulging in online shopping, and the most absurd thing of all was giving insulting nicknames to the professor and daring to use them in class. Writing this makes me want to laugh; how could such ridiculous things happen?
Whether it is fortunate or unfortunate, I liked almost all my classmates except for those three, and we all suffered greatly from their actions. A few classmates attempted to resolve the conflicts privately one-on-one, but none received respect or resolution; the other party either passively resisted or maliciously attacked, refusing to acknowledge any behavior that violated student guidelines or professional ethics, claiming that others were maliciously misinterpreting their actions.
The situation began to escalate shortly after the last semester started, with more and more victims emerging. After we all felt overwhelmed, about two months ago, the vast majority of the class collectively signed a complaint letter detailing many personal experiences and submitted it to the associate dean in charge of student affairs. What followed was endless waiting and torment. The investigation initially proceeded smoothly; the associate dean spoke with the bullying "suspects" one by one and possibly made a disciplinary decision. Due to federal laws, we could not know the specific details of the punishment, but judging by surrounding information, it was likely a temporary warning, recorded internally by the school.
Then things began to spiral out of control. The bullies, having received some form of punishment, attempted to retaliate by complaining to the dean, claiming that the associate dean exhibited racist behavior. Oh, right, I must reveal the identities of the bullies: they are three African American women. The dean then took over the matter to mediate. They gradually became dissatisfied with the dean for not unconditionally siding with them, arguing that everyone else in the class was engaging in racial discrimination, with the only evidence being: we are Black women.
As one of the ten students who reported them by name (a total of ten students provided detailed personal experiences), I was chosen by the dean to be one of the three representatives. This news did not initially make me happy; firstly, because on the day I received the dean's email, I was still in Mexico for spring break and had no idea I would need to divert my attention to this matter. Secondly, the dean's email was very professional and cold, raising concerns that things were developing unfavorably for us. After spring break, I and the other two lucky individuals went to the dean's office. The situation was somewhat better than I had imagined; the dean did not disbelieve our joint complaint and did not blindly take sides. We also managed to abolish the student representative system and secured the opportunity for the entire class to enter mediation meetings.
However, things were not that simple. The following weeks were a back-and-forth tug-of-war between the two sides. Although the dean no longer insisted on using student representatives, I still became more deeply involved in the process in a certain sense. In communicating with the dean and my classmates, I began to rethink my relationship with power. I am usually sensitive to power imbalances, so I had long disliked the concept of "leadership." Perhaps due to my immersion in Chinese society, I defaulted to associating leadership with power struggles, which I disliked. But this experience allowed me to see how the dean, as a "higher-up," could cage her own power while maintaining necessary control over the project.
I am someone who is better at listening than speaking. I tend to read and integrate as much information from my environment as possible, not just the content everyone is discussing. Then I prefer to say only what is necessary; if there is nothing that must be said, I would rather not seek attention and occupy everyone's space. Yet, for some reason, the dean still extended an invitation to me and another friend, hoping we would consider participating in some committees with real authority starting next academic year, to learn about power and promote the development of the college culture. Our school has several committees involving both faculty and students, dealing with specific decisions about campus affairs, where teachers and students have almost equal voting weight. The most powerful committees include the faculty hiring committee and the curriculum committee, which can influence the hiring of new professors and the revision of course outlines. Well, what a big pie!
Returning to the bullying incident, the back-and-forth communication drained us mentally, and my friends fell into a slump. I also felt the increasing pressure, began eating more unhealthy, high-sugar, oily foods, and my sleep time decreased. But what I am proud of is that I maintained a relatively stable physical and mental state. I believe that even if a coping mechanism seems unhealthy, as long as it is not excessive, it is still healthy. For example, my food intake significantly increased, but it did not reach the level of binge eating. I also knew this would only be a temporary phenomenon; once the source of stress disappeared, things would naturally return to normal. So I could continue this way instead of forcing myself to give up this behavior immediately. If I suppressed my needs, it might lead to more extreme situations.
Thus, I tried to take deep breaths during any available downtime and express my psychological discomfort as soon as possible. A fascinating phenomenon is that because my classmates and I were intensely together in school, it was almost a microcosm of a high school experience. Many times, we empathized with what was happening at school, and when we realized our feelings were echoed, the discomfort would instantly diminish. We tried to hold a small meeting after school every day to discuss whether there had been new conflicts with the bullying group, whether there had been any relevant communications with the dean or professors, and whether we had experienced any intense emotional discomfort. Even so, this process was still difficult, but we managed to stumble through together.
Finally, as planned, mediation arrived. The entire meeting lasted over three hours, with no breaks or pauses, yet we still did not discuss all the issues. As we expected, the three individuals on the other side adopted a very passive resistance and defensive strategy, responding to many accusations with "you're overthinking it, that behavior wasn't directed at you," "I don't remember," and "I never did that." However, for some events with more than one witness, even if they insisted on denying it, it was difficult for them to clear themselves. In the first two hours of the meeting, I had not prepared to speak; my habit is to observe first, and I was also secretly weighing whether speaking would expose me to additional targeting from them (they could indeed do such a thing).
Until one of my good friends passionately spoke up, accusing them of laughing at my pronunciation of a word during one of my presentations last month. She had never mentioned this to me, and since she was my presentation teammate at the time, only she, standing at the front of the classroom, noticed it. Other classmates were shocked to hear this information; after the meeting, several friends told me they felt like rushing over to "hit" them when they heard it. Surprisingly, they did not deny this; instead, they almost tacitly accepted it. I had no time to be upset about "they laughed at me again" because I already knew they had similar behaviors in other situations; it just wasn't appropriate to bring up since it didn't happen at school, so I was somewhat mentally prepared. At that moment, a voice in my head said, "This is my moment to fight; I need to think clearly about whether to seize it."
I quickly thought about my speaking strategy during the one or two minutes before the next classmate spoke. After more than two hours of observation, I was quite sure of their defensive weight. If I came in hard, I might be dodged, closing off the possibility of dialogue with me. So I decided to use a somewhat risky strategy, trying to advance by retreating. At the beginning of my speech, I pointed out my anxiety regarding culture and identity as an international student, lowering my stance. Then I apologized to the bullying group, saying that my apology was for the fact that the complaint letter indeed caused them additional psychological harm, and the reason I chose to sign the joint letter was due to my own incompetence. I lacked the ability to find a way to communicate our conflicts privately without involving a third party, so I decided to let the faculty intervene and have a third-party professional investigation and mediation, which would bring about new power dynamics. I wanted to clarify that I had no intention of using others' power to attack them.
This strategy worked. When I began to address specific incidents, the classmates I had conflicts with acknowledged the existence of those events, without resorting to excuses like "I don't remember." Great, this is what I wanted. The situation was quite simple: near the end of last semester, I went to the campus cafeteria with a friend during lunch. I wanted to use the microwave to heat my food while she went to buy coffee from a vending machine. When we arrived at the cafeteria, there was no one next to the microwave, and it was not in use. I opened the microwave and found a heated meal box inside; without thinking much, I took it out and started heating my food. About two minutes later, my food was also heated, and I packed it up to take back to our college building to eat, but since my friend was still chatting with another classmate, we did not leave immediately.
While waiting for my friend, this classmate approached me and asked if I had taken her meal box out of the microwave, with an unfriendly tone. I sensed her anger and hostility and quickly realized that the box I took out was indeed hers. However, I was still quite clueless in that environment, not knowing what the problem was. Most likely, she was very particular about the meal box, and I had crossed someone’s personal boundary. So, without thinking much, I decided to apologize first. As a result, before I could finish my apology, I was interrupted; she said, "Don't apologize, just don't do that again." I can't say her tone was particularly harsh, but it was undoubtedly cold and somewhat sarcastic. At that time, just before significant changes were happening in my home country, like many others, my mental state was not positive. When I returned to the classroom, I told my friend what had just happened, and tears flowed.
The matter passed for a while, and I did not want to pursue right or wrong. However, after the semester ended, I had dinner and chatted with a few friends, sharing the difficulties and confusions we encountered during the semester, and I mentioned this incident. Two friends felt that this was too bizarre; it is not a universal truth that one cannot touch others' meal boxes in a public microwave, and regardless, the other party should not have communicated with me in that manner. Encouraged by them, I decided to consult the professor who taught our ethics class about this matter, asking for his thoughts. I deliberately omitted all identifying information about the other party while telling the story, not mentioning gender or ethnicity, only stating that they were students from our psychology department when the professor inquired.
The professor was completely on my side. I told him that I was also reflecting on whether I often unintentionally infringe on others' boundaries and whether my lack of understanding of American culture led to what happened afterward. The professor assured me that this was not American culture; it was that person's personal culture. American individualistic culture does not equate to being aggressive in imposing one's standards on others. He also said that I did not need to overly consider the other party's perspective; if one did not want others to have the opportunity to touch their meal box, they should not leave the microwave unattended.
So, during the meeting when I confronted her, I also brought up the argument of "don't leave the microwave." She was very displeased and began to justify the reasonableness of her behavior at that time, blurring or even distorting some details of the events, saying things like, "I was just going to get water; I knew my food was in the microwave; I wouldn't leave for long; you just don't respect my boundaries, blablabla." Unfortunately, I have a good memory for environmental and temporal information, and I had a clearer recall memory of this incident than she did. I tried to lay out my timeline to prove that she must have left for at least 3-5 minutes, while our lunch break was only an hour, and the microwave was communal. She still tried to get entangled in the details of the matter. Although I could argue with her, I suddenly felt that it was not very meaningful because there was no witness who had seen the entire process. Continuing like this would just lead to "each side has its own reasoning."
I quickly recalled what made me most uncomfortable about this incident; it was not how long she had been gone but her attitude when I apologized. So I redirected the topic back to the apology that she interrupted. I said I could feel her anger, and I sincerely wanted to apologize, but she did not accept my apology and showed no willingness to communicate about what had happened. Everything that followed was something I silently digested. This is also why I found it difficult to have the willingness and confidence to communicate anything with her alone afterward. I hit a near-perfect point. Everyone has cultural differences regarding boundaries; refusing to communicate about these differences and believing one's standards are the gold standard is more serious than the conflict itself. After I finished speaking, the originally scheduled three-hour meeting time was almost exhausted. The dean summarized part of what I raised, the core being, "Don't think your culture is more important than others'."
That day after school, the classmate who engaged in dialogue with me was furious and attacked me over the phone in her apartment's living room. Coincidentally, one of my good friends was her roommate (God knows how much torment my friend faced during the time she lived with her). My friend heard everything about how she mocked my way of speaking, my accent, my background identity, and said she "used all her strength not to laugh while she was crying and talking." Oh, by the way, throughout my speech, I was crying. Before I started speaking, I realized it would be hard to control my tears during the entire process, so I had prepared a tissue box in advance. What makes me proud is that even while crying, my mind was very clear, and my breathing and speaking were smooth. Crying did not mean I lost control; it proved that I even dared to show vulnerability in front of the "enemy."
When my friend heard this part, she was furious and immediately updated our small group with the information. Even more absurdly, she attacked the white professor who stood by my side and used his private life information as ammunition. The gist was that how dare I consult a "white" professor about this matter; even if he f with a black man (the professor's husband is African American), it does not mean he knows what we Black people have experienced. Come on girl, throughout my conversation with the professor, I never mentioned your racial identity; don't drag everything into skin color and then play the victim! Undoubtedly, I was very angry, and my friends were even angrier than I was. Later, we went to a cheese factory to indulge in ice cream and desserts, finally stabilizing our mindset.
The next morning, I went to see the dean again with another friend. The dean praised my "strategy," saying I had tricked the other party back and forth. He said that "trick" was not the most appropriate term, but it conveyed the meaning, you know? By switching the focus of the argument several times, I left them with no escape. I said, "I told you, right? Chinese people know how to play Go; we have strategy." We also updated the dean on the continuous attacks she was making against us in her private space. The dean was astonished by her dragging another professor into the insults, and I felt that at that moment, he truly regretted admitting her. But it is hard to say; these individuals are smart enough to play a kind and warm persona during the interview for several hours. I digress; I just want to say that some things are really hard to trace back and avoid; some calamities must be endured first.
After communicating with the dean, I felt much more relaxed. To be honest, when I learned that the other party had irrationally attacked me and I digested the immediate intense emotions, I felt a lot more relieved. Because I knew she was such a terrible person, I no longer needed to invest my empathy in her or think about how reasonable her attacks on me were. Don't waste your energy on bad people; that statement is not wrong.
I have been writing this content intermittently for several days. On one hand, the story is too long, and I find it hard to find a solid block of time to write. On the other hand, I realize that I am still slowly digesting the entire matter. I am occasionally disturbed by other information I did not pay attention to at the time but remembered, and I take them out to chew over repeatedly. I am also venting my anger through playing the piano, playing calm Bach as if I were smashing the piano. I also need extra time to rest, actively reducing my study intensity this weekend, only doing necessary tasks instead of completing future study and writing assignments as originally planned. I know I need to write all this down to give myself a chance to sort things out, and perhaps it could help others as well. One thing I am very grateful for is that this whole incident has sparked many new potentials in me. I never knew I could be so vulnerable, sensitive, yet brave and determined. I also did not know I could be both sincere and strategic. I like this version of myself, and I am very willing to believe in this version of myself.