An Open Letter to Queen's University

I think it’s time we got something straight between us: I don’t like you, and you need to stop harassing me. I owe you no debts, no library fees, no final assignments, and no loyalty – it’s over. In fact, the only support I still harbour for any of your number is for those you won’t support yourself. Your overworked, underpaid employees who are running your institution, and who are regularly discriminated against because they may not hold the level of education boasted by your graduates. And yes, you know exactly who I’m talking about. I was a Film Studies student.

My choice to go to Queen’s was never based on your ridiculously exaggerated academic reputation. I was happily never aware of it until I arrived, and was subsequently repulsed by Upper Years’ claims of being “the best!” I was never taken in. I came to you as to a film for which I had not seen the preview. If I had I might have skipped the show. As it is, and as you are hopefully understanding, my final review is not good.

Please do not mistake me, that review in no way encompasses the friends I made in Kingston, or the faculty and staff of the Film Studies department, of which I am grateful to have been a part. In fact, I believe I ended up in the only department in which I could sanely have survived four years with you. No, when I express my displeasure, I exclude those things for which you can not take credit. I refuse to believe that the experiences of making friends, or taking classes with professors I enjoyed, were things that I could not have benefited from at other institutions. What you unfortunately can, and should take credit for is the elitist, holier-than-thou attitude that you encourage in those students who are gormless enough to buy into it; the gross mismanagement of the horrifying amounts of money that your alumni (I can only imagine, given your aggressive campaigns to get me to do likewise) are bullied into donating; and the bureaucracy so single-mindedly bent on the institution’s outward appearance that it conveniently disregards the Old Boys’ Club that’s running it behind the scenes.

Sadly, I have very little hope of you doing any of that. Certainly, until you do, I’d like very little more to do with you. Any contract I had with you, and any contact that needed to persist, I feel ended with my formal graduation in the Spring. Yet, you refuse to take the hint. So let me be perfectly clear: Don’t send me your magazines, don’t spam my inbox, and absolutely do not ask me for money. I am done paying you for what you do. Stop trying to track me down. And stop calling my mother.