Editor’s note: Due to questions from concerned readers, we would like to point out that this is a fictitious story. We thought we’d have a little bit of fun with this one. Imagine if The New York Times had a SIPA beat…
NEW YORK, NY – A SIPA student recently endured a mugging on the way to Quantitative Analysis class only to have her homework rejected by Professor Paul Thurman because she arrived two minutes late.
Jane Watkins, a first year International Security Policy concentrator from Schenectady, New York was walking along 114th St. between Broadway and Amsterdam when she was approached by two men wearing ski masks and dressed entirely in black. According to Ms. Watkins’ report, one of the men grabbed her schoolbag while the other pushed her onto the ground, causing her to sprain her left ankle.
“They started to run away with my bag but I screamed and begged them to let me have my Statistics homework,” Ms. Watkins reported. “I told them they could have my wallet, my iPhone, anything- just not the homework.”
In a moment of charity, one of the muggers apparently reached into Ms. Watkins’ purse and retrieved her homework assignment, laying it neatly on the sidewalk next to where the incident occurred.
“Even though my ankle hurt really badly and I couldn’t really walk very well, I knew that Professor Thurman would have been really angry if I tried to turn the homework in late. So I hobbled to the SIPA building as fast as I could. I thought because I was only two minutes late he’d be lenient. I thought wrong,”
When she arrived at the class, Professor Thurman had already begun his lecture. Ms. Watkins attempted to surreptitiously hand her homework to a teaching assistant sitting near the front, but when Mr. Thurman noticed he snatched the homework away, announcing that she was two minutes late and thus would receive zero credit for the assignment.
“I thought he’d look down and see my bloody ankle and have some sympathy, but he didn’t,” Ms. Watkins recalled. “I had no choice but to limp to the back of the classroom and act as if nothing had happened.”
When reached for comment, Mr. Thurman refused to apologize for his action. “My late policy is right there in the syllabus, so why should I be lenient just because it wasn’t strictly her fault for being late? Besides, if she had consulted her z-tables she would have known that the probability of being mugged on that block is quite high and she probably should have taken a different route to class.”
So, let that be a lesson to us all. Be sure to consult your z-tables, and don’t get mugged.
Follow-up: the identity of the muggers was not immediately known, but campus security officers believe that they were undergraduate members of a Columbia fraternity house, an increasing number of whom have turned to thuggish behavior in recent weeks after a high-profile drug bust deprived them of their primary source of income.
Is this true? It reads like an Onion article
@Emma No- it’s a satire.
you guys should probably add this disclaimer to facebook.