Home » Personal Stories » Michelle: The Instructor “was at peace with her having seizures”

Michelle: The Instructor “was at peace with her having seizures”

Posted on by
English: Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.

English: Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Like I said in my previous post, I get some shocking stories from people, current students, parents of students, alumni and employees, about the abuses of Naropa. I treat every story with the confidence level that the correspondent desires because I am more interested in helping people overcome the abuses of Naropa University than to create compelling content. I will never betray the confidence of anyone who sends me a genuine e-mail. A few weeks ago, I received this e-mail from a parent and I have been sitting on this story until the parent was able to get her daughter out of Naropa. Here is Michelle’s story:

I am a parent of a current, until Friday, student. She has been there exactly 4 weeks. It’s been a nightmare! She transferred from Eastern Virginia Medical School. 18 credits did not. They started her out as an M1 but she transferred as an M3. Already seeing patients in Virginia. My daughter has seizure disorder. For the most part it was controlled however upon arriving in Denver the disorder became worse. We were able to get it under control but not before she had had a seizure in a class where the instructor has 18 students gather in circle around her and while holding hands discuss how this made them feel.

Second series of seizures were the following week but this time the same instructor did not allow her to leave. Her apt. being directly across the road. The second seizure in this series resulted in the instructor telling my daughter it was okay. He was at peace with her having seizures. It took 15 minutes for someone to call an ambulance.

So far this has resulted in violations of the disability act.

Now the disability worker informs her this past Friday of her rights. Missing 5 classes would normally result in failure but depending on the teacher, under this disability program, she may be allowed extra time to catch the work up. Keep In mind she has already had these classes. They are M1 classes.. The disability worker does make it clear though that if they had known the severity of my daughters seizures then they would not have accepted her.

Violation of the disability act.

The disability act is federal. Acts being passed by congress makes it federal.

She is currently attempting to withdraw medically so that as pit was put to her, she could not run the risk of being “kicked out” on misconduct. Poor wording on their part. However, true to form, this institution which strongly suggested this is making this difficult as well.

So you will know, I feel this institution believes they have a young person that they can push. I however taught school for over 22 years in Alabama and some of that tenure I taught law. I now have a team of attorneys on stand by as we’ll as my Federal contacts and those in the accreditation department.

I’ve written this as to not redeem my child, but let others know what this institution is like.

Okay, so the instructor has a group of eighteen students sit around this poor student, as she is seizing, and talk about how this made these students feel. Do I really need to tell you how incredibly fucked up this position is? The fact that these students could sit around a student and not phone the emergency services and try to get her the help she needs, instead focusing on your own spiritual path. Let me make it perfectly clear, this woman’s story is credible because of the fact that when I was at Naropa, people there did similar things which tends to give me pause. As for the comment that the instructor was “at peace” with her having seizures, it boggles the mind that this instructor would not be terminated immediately. In the real world, this instructor would have been off the campus ASAP. In the “school” that Trungpa built, however, they practice detachment from the real world at the cost of real human beings.

Naropa is not a disability-friendly school. All three of it’s campuses and it’s student housing apartments present accessibility challenges, but none more so than the Arapahoe campus. Only two of the buildings on the campus are really wheel-chair accessible, the Lincoln Building has no elevator and it’s classrooms are blocked by stairs, including some very steep stairs in some instances that block access to the Lincoln Lecture Hall. I have constantly wondered how Naropa can legally get away with snubbing the disabled. But to threaten to kick her out on misconduct because she is disabled and refusing to accommodate her needs is illegal. To tell her that if they knew about her disability, they would not have accepted her as a student is illegal.

When I talk about the abuses of Naropa University, usually I talk about the lack of ethics it takes to advertise an anatomy class as being scientific when it has alternative medicine woo attached to it. But abuses like this add a darker dimension to the cult-like nature of Naropa University, where empathy and doing the right thing are an after-though, if they are thought about at all. When someone is having a seizure, I don’t gather the other people around me to talk about how it made me feel while the person seizing is still in need of help. I call a fucking ambulance and that is what the people here should have done. My only question that I would have for these students is… why didn’t you call for help?

I hope Michelle continues to pursue legal action against Naropa University and I am more than happy to continue providing coverage on this story as it develops. Naropa University should be held accountable for it’s fraud and abuses.

Related articles

4 thoughts on “Michelle: The Instructor “was at peace with her having seizures””

  1. This is obsolete as you have been misinformed. This article is the result of ignorance. Think of the telephone game; information spread from one ear to the next, losing details and morphing into something unrelated to the actual event.

    I think anyone sharing their personal stories is important; however, analyzing the behaviors of others without doing appropriate research is not an apt way of collecting even qualitative data.

    I am curious about what the other 18 students had to say about this incident (if it even occurred). Not to mention, there is a violation of THEIR confidentiality, as their story has been told by the mouth of a heated parent.

    I graduated from Naropa and have applied my degree proudly into the Boulder Community. Although expensive and a massive challenge in the realm of academia, I would not trade my experience in for the world.

    I do not harbor resistance towards your personal cause (although I don’t see justifiable QUANTITATIVE data), but I do believe in truth. You have undoubtedly exposed what appears like a vulnerable moment and misconstrued it into something shameful. I hope the future stories you post are not like this one….YIKES!

    Also, I challenge you to actually keep this comment. You may be tempted to delete, but as you mentioned in your home page, people need to conclude based on various perspectives, not just your own.

    • Nah, I am not tempted to delete and here is why: I am going to take you to task for having the temerity to deny this woman’s experiences.

      This woman came to me to share her story. I don’t doubt her story because I went to Naropa and I know how resistant Naropa is to change and responsibility. This article is the result of a distraught parent contacting me when her daughter was being abused by Naropa University.

      You know what, those other 18 students are free to come forward as they will and they can tell their side of the story. I have not received a story from any one of those people as of yet. Additionally, the charge of violating their confidentiality is ludicrous as no students have been identified in this story. The class hasn’t been identified and the instructor hasn’t been identified.

      When a group of students hold a discussion about how a woman seizing right in front of them makes them feel, I think that is proof enough to look further, to be concerned about Naropa.

      And finally, you have every right to your personal experience, which is vastly different from mine or this poor girl’s. But it is sickening how you can just blow a story like this off, and try to make Naropa sound better when they were negligent. If you believe in truth, then I suggest you accept not just the things that make you feel good, but those truths that make you feel uncomfortable.

  2. I agree with the Truth Fairy’s comment, I’m a current student at Naropa and frankly it kind of sucks, if it wasn’t for the professors I would be gone in a heart beat. But this story has no proof behind it and like the rest of this blog is very word of mouthy, and as someone coming from a hard science background there’s no evidence supporting this case at all. Which these sort of accusations necessitate. I’m not discrediting a story, but I’m calling it exactly what it is: a story.

  3. ‘Processing’ , ‘deep listening’ , non violent communication techniques.

    This is all to substitute for decision making and discriminating abilities and taking any direct action about anything, thus contributing to the prolongation of suffering which is always the result. .

    There are many , many examples of this kind of insanity in the Cult of Shambhala, it is how it operates, no surprise at all that they sat around and ‘processed’ while she had a seizure. That is what they do, process things externally with each other, or constantly process what is going on inside their own minds. “How do I feel’ “how am I doing in my meditation’ , ‘How enlightened am I becoming?’

    It is deeply a part of the Shambhala culture, and therefore Naropa’s culture Most of these professors are in the cult of Shambhala themselves, or are probably Hindu Oneness or New Age Theosophist dherents, or would have to have professed their belief in the New World Order of Shambhala and other New Age Cultisms to even be able to teach there.

    I am surprised they didn’t all to ‘Tonglen’ for her, as she was having here seizures.

    That’s the New Utopians of the Future’s answer to suffering in the world. Sit and meditate and do Tonglen for the suffering of the world in little peace bubbles, or go solve impossible to solve world problems, in other cultures you know nothing about , because you are being taught that ‘not knowing’ and not reading history or or anything to do anymore with the western canon is better and embracing the believe systems of medieval cultures, atavistic and misogynistic culture based still in a caste system, is better than your own western culture, and , that one is taught these cultures are actually more ‘advanced’ than your own, and particularly one learns to hate your own western culture, that is very important, because then you can be molded more easilty into accepting a future Global citizenship and a Global Third World status, where your ‘compassion’ from a bubble of undisturbed ‘peace’ is emoted and is sent out into the ‘ether’ as you pat yourself on the back for being extraordinarily ‘compassionate’ by just having ‘thoughts of compassion’, and associating with other ‘extraordinarily’compassionate citizens who think and talk and feel just like you, i.e. complete dumbed down , stupifyed , and in a bubble of Peaceful Hindu Oneness. .

    Passive Global citizens, obessed about their inner minds and outer yoga bodies, Globalism brought to us by corporations that learned so much by outsourcing in India and other HIndu/Buddhist countries about how miring someone in ignorance and superstition and these HIndu Guru memes will create people who will accept anything and blame themselves and their own’karma’ for all corruption and greed and exploitation around them, so very helpful for corporatism and the religious cult kleptocracies that support it.

    Soon we will be like India, walking by suffering all around us and not even noticing it, just like in India where suffering is profound thanks to the Godmen and their Hindu Oneness where one is taught not to ‘interfere’ it is their ‘karma as the Gurus and the Lamas indulge themselves at the top of their dung-heap of covered with pristine snow.

    http://www.extibetanbuddhist.com

Leave a comment