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Abusive SF

Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2019 9:40 pm
by SMARTRegret
What do I do if my SF is abusive?

I know that SMART wont help in any way, but can someone recommend a good lawyer who I can share my case with?

I'm not doing anything related to my major, the environment is toxic, and I feel like I'm being thrown into stuff that I ethically shouldn't be thrown into.

I've been here for about 8 months and have a few years left. I don't know how much longer I can tolerate this before just quitting and accepting the 200k+ of debt I'll have....

Re: Abusive SF

Posted: Sat Sep 21, 2019 4:25 am
by Sisyphus
So since you're pondering things I'd suggest first of all going to the Debtor's Discord I manage so you can ask questions of other exiles and read up on the current state of knowledge about what happens if you leave the program. As of now there actually is a process in place where after they say "pay us back" you can formally dispute it and you won't have to pay until that all gets sorted out (it tends to take a while...).

https://discord.gg/MEhgRRC

Unfortunately, everyone's situation is unique enough such that establishing patterns is difficult. However, there have been two instances of participants leaving their SF due to a hostile environment (one during Phase 1, the other at the start of Phase 2 effectively), that upon disputing the validity of their debt had it waived in full.

So it does seem that SMART, to some small extent, realizes that consigning their participants to being actively abused wouldn't look good on their part if any of them decided to go public with it.

How much that would apply to your case though depends largely on how you're defining a toxic environment, etc. and even moreso the extent to which you can document/prove that's the case should it be required.

That's honestly all I can really add, as a public forum isn't the best for going into details about these sorts of things.