39. The Importance of Strong Passwords
I hacked into my IT Security professor's Blackboard account and posted a general notice to the class about the importance of choosing a strong password. In my defense we were challenged every exam that if we could guess the test login password, then we got an automatic perfect score. Really, that may have been said in jest, but I decided to try instead for the professor's master password. A short dictionary attack later, and I had it. It was actually a pretty weak, common, non-capped, alpha-only, word. I waited until after the final exam and posted a quote from our textbook about weak passwords that seemed to come from her account. When I showed up for my test results, and another final exam, I was escorted, by security, to an emergency dean meeting. A couple of weeks later I received mail telling me I was suspended for a term. I fought it and lost. The college claimed I had "incited panic amongst the students." The suspension disqualified the funding I was receiving to help pay for the school. On an update, I transferred to a different college and finished my Bachelor's degree in IT last year.
38. Wow. Just...Wow.
I got thrown out after I graduated from a Master's degree program. The teacher asked me out for drinks when I asked to talk about one of my papers. I turned him down. I had to take a class with him in my next to last semester and he tried to throw me out for plagiarism. I tried to press harassment charges and the ombudsman talked me out of it by saying I would be stuck in his class if I pressed charges.
The Ombudsman asked to contact administrators at the school and urged me to get an incomplete in the guy's class and just graduate next term. After graduation, I am getting ready to go on job interviews and I receive a letter telling me I have to enroll in four courses and get As to offset the F the teacher in question wants to give me.
I follow up and the teacher, who is now the Chair of the program, elects himself my academic advisor and takes over the situation. He fakes my grades and tells me I have six weeks to complete the entire course all over again. He tells me if I do my best he will make it possible to graduate as it's mathematically impossible. I can't complete the work in time and he throws me out.
I'm given permission to reapply and soon it becomes apparent they are not going to let me in to fix the situation. I contact the Graduate Department and meet with their legal counsel. I show them the faked grades, explain the rule violations and inform them of my having reported the guy. They tell me to try to work with the program again and then they will intervene.
The program refuses any solution involving my readmission. The Graduate Dean allows me to file academic grievances and rules that there are lots of things wrong but does nothing about them. He concludes by telling me I can either get readmitted or give a replacement course via transfer.
I take the course and submit it. The Graduate Dean says they can't accept the course if I can't get enrolled. Dean rules the matter reviewed and closed. I sue the school alleging unjust enrichment. I provide all of the documents and records as It was all conducted via email and I have my student folder. These get certified via discovery. The school evokes Sovereign Immunity and says that since the fraud and negligence happened more then two years before I filed. They are immune to prosecutions. Judge agrees. I file an appeal.
As of August of this year, it will be ten years.
37. Stealing Cones
Around my college, we have these weird traffic cones. About 10:00, almost every Friday they come to life and say "steal me" when your drunk ass stumbles past them.
Life in the Land of the Long White Cloud
36. Closet Privacy
Knew this one dude that was caught masturbating multiple times in a utilities closet.
Yes, this is a throwaway. No, I am not him.
35. Playing With Air Horns
I chased a teacher with an air horn at the end of lunch time. Followed him into the toilet and let the air horn rip. He pissed all over himself. That was my 10th suspension and my final.
GettyImages
34. All Against The Security Guard
A friend of mine was expelled because she created a Facebook group called "Does anyone else hate our library's security guard?" which got to 10,000 members in under a week, with thousands of comments of incidents of the security guard being an arsehole. This then made the local news.
Our security guard was an absolute jerk tbf.
A month later they told my friend she could come back but that she was banned from all social media.
The one good thing about it though was that the jerk security guard actually lightened up and became ok after that.
33. Presentation For The Ages
Not me, but a kid in my college was expelled for taking a giant dildo in during some oral presentation, slamming it on some students table and telling the class to screw themselves.
GettyImages
32. Soliciting The Wrong Guy
My drug-dealing and drug-addicted friend thought it was a great idea to send an email to the principal trying to sell him heroin.
Australian Society for Evidence Based Teaching
31. Don’t Fall Asleep While Smoking
Got expelled myself, second year medicine student. Came back from a heavy night of drinking, lit up a Marlboro red and subsequently passed out from the drink. Woke up dazedly to huge hands grabbing me by the scruff of my T-shirt and tossing me from the room and dragging me backwards out the shared flat we had. Firefighters had responded to the multiple phone calls of smoke coming from my window and saved me from death by smoke inhalation. Slept at a friends house that night, I was a mess still not fully comprehending what happened, when we went back the next day to collect my belongings and the full room was torched, surprisingly the rest of the house was left intact. I lost everything, and I mean everything. My family's home was 200+ miles away and I had no phone, wallet, clothes. Everything I owned destroyed because of my own stupidity.
Public Domain Pictures
30. That Was Dumb
Punched holes in the walls while drunk.. yep I was stupid.
29. Caught Yellow Handed
I peed onto a rival fraternity's back porch. The lights were off at their house, so I didn't know they were all inside having movie night. They all saw.
28. Flaming Couch
My Master Sergeant was kicked out of college for throwing a flaming couch through the dorm window. He tried to argue to the dean that he was just saving lives, but since he was the one who lit it on fire, it didn't buy him much sympathy.
Who are you calling sensitive?
27. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb
Had two friends that got expelled at the same time. They were engineering students who didn't give a care. I went to college across town and visited them on a Friday night to find them working on chemistry homework online. See, they had ten problems assigned per week, but now had ten weeks worth of homework, all due on the same deadline. So, I watched them get through about 15 of the 100 problems and they just looked at each other and one of them just looked at the other and said: "Shawn, it looks like we're dropping chemistry." And they both started laughing at each other, almost to the point of tears.
They made it to finals week and skipped one of their final exams that they actually stayed up all night for. "Didn't feel like going." Somehow they made it back to the spring semester and I met them to watch some playoff football. I'm talking with them and one looks at me and goes, "Can you believe those sneaky bastards? They automatically signed us back up for chemistry after we dropped it last semester and thought we wouldn't notice! You know what we did? We walked right down to the registrar and dropped it again! See if they ever try to pull this crap again."
Despite them earning a 0.05 GPA, what actually got them kicked out was a dorm incident where one of them was so drunk that they decided it would be fun to open-palm slap the guy working the front desk of the dorm... when security was sent up to their room, they apparently found several hundred Adderall without a prescription and then proceeded to find a nitrous tank, drugs stored in my friends guitar amp and then one of them sealed himself in a Rubbermaid container and hid under the bed.
Pinterest
26. Something’s Off With That Guy
My dad teaches as a Christian college.
I was forced to attend because hey, free tuition.
I lasted one year then got kicked out for not being "godly" enough.
I was SO HAPPY.
It was a stressful environment. Not the classes or professors, some of the nicest people ever.
It was the students and RA/RD in my dorm that made it awful. I'm not social. At all. Or religious. I also don't like being awoken at 2 am by other girls on my floor blasting pop music as loud as possible.
So I'd often get "confronted" about my attitude, and why I didn't want to sit with my dorm mates at meal times. And they took my antisocialness as me being "not right with the Lord."
25. Turning Heads on Campus
I went to a private Christian University, and I have a friend who got expelled for supposedly exorcizing a demon out of someone in the middle of a wide open courtyard.
24. Mining The Lab
Installing bitcoin miners on all the computers in a video editing lab.
23. Explosive Butt
I shot a firework out of my butt in a campus owned house.
22. Who Knew?!
Apparently, you can get kicked out for not showing up to class and failing everything. Who knew?!
GettyImages
21. Legend of The League
I had a friend who skipped all classes and failed everything because all he wanted to do was play LoL. He got a warning that if he didn't get his grades up he would be suspended for a year. He got suspended. When he went back to the school a year later the same thing happened again. Now he can't go back to that college again.
20. Naughty Couple
For being off campus with a member of the opposite sex without proper supervision. No, seriously.
19. NO KISSING
A guy and a girl in my uni (which is located in a conservative country) were caught making out in the stairway. Both were legally adults.
Girl's parents were called, they took her away (so technically not expelled) and got her married to another guy already lined up.
Guy was transferred to a lesser known college where he didn't perform well but landed a crappy job.
18. Really Hitting The Fan
NOT ME but happened to a teammate on my rowing team. He got busted for drinking which isn't an expellable offense. But to get back at the RA that caught him, he crapped into a bag, went to the guy's first floor window, and threw it into the RA's room. What made things worse is that the RA had a box fan in the window. The poop hit it and sprayed everywhere in the room.
Literally, the crap hit the fan. He was promptly expelled.
17. Building a Case
Currently am aware of a group of international students getting expelled from my school. They've been whispering to each other during exams in another language, and as luck would have it my professor happens to speak that language and has been slowly building a case against them without their knowing it.
The kids somehow also got the solutions to every homework and exam last semester which is very similar to what we've been assigned this semester. However, the kids are so lazy they blindly copy whole solutions not realizing numbers are different, sometimes units are metric and they answer in English, and one problem asked for something completely different than they solved for using the exact procedure to solve last semester's homework. They're absolutely screwed and I'm kinda excited to see it. One of them had a 3.75 GPA was on the verge of being auto-admitted to our MS/BS program. He’s probably been cheating his whole college career (we're two semesters away from graduation). Plot twist: the advisor to that program is the instructor that is currently building the case against them. So basically that guy is mega screwed.
Professor is a savage. He's been grading all their homework and exams like everything was fine and one day unleashed a dossier of justice.
16. Close One
I was making a search engine for our school teacher evaluation page. It absolutely blew up in popularity and a large portion of the school was using it (about 5k views per day). Essentially it was like Rate My Professor except it used the evaluations that they force students to do at the end of the class as data. I also added features that made it more desirable to students.
It became so popular that it was showing up on the front page of Google for certain teacher names. Some of those teachers had low ratings and got pissed off and complained. I had unintentionally violated IP laws because the evaluations were under password protections and my site was not. The only reason I didn't get expelled was because the dean of my department had my back. He did research and concluded the information should not have been private in the first place, then sent a public information request to make it so my project did not break the law. I definitely had people asking for my expulsion for a scary amount of time.
15. That Escalated Quickly
When I was in college I got suspended three times for bad grades. At one point my GPA was a 1.0. I finally got it together and graduated with a degree in finance and a few years later went back and got a second bachelors in accounting. I think my GPA is a 3.2 now. Im not working in finance or accounting because I can't find a job. I mostly just hate my life now and wish for death.
Pinterest
14. Learning To Get Help
I was expelled back in my fourth year of college. I've dealt with social anxiety since childhood and it came to a head in my third year when I was having panic attacks frequently. I got help but by then it was too late for my grades because I had been barely passing classes by the skin of my teeth.
I was a fourth year comp sci major who didn't know how to program. At all. I tried to get back on the horse after going through therapy for my anxiety, but I felt so defeated that my grades slipped further into the hole I had dug for myself.
I think the quarter I got kicked out I had two Fs, two Ds and a C. The dean sent me a letter saying I was done with engineering.
I took the time to get my act together, got a part-time job, lived in a crappy apartment with seven people living in a space meant for four people at the absolute max. I worked minimum wage and realized I needed to finish school.
I saw my undergrad counselor numerous times, who very graciously helped me. I needed to write out a contract addressed to the dean with my detailed plan on how I was going to prove I was worthy of being readmitted, and the classes I would take to qualify for graduation.
It took a while but I eventually managed to get readmitted by working my ass off, taking summer school courses which counted toward my major and getting a 3.0 average, then following up by getting good grades once they let me back in.
It was tough because I needed therapy for so many years but I didn't want to accept it until my breakdown in my third year. I wish I had gotten help sooner but I truly thought I could handle it all on my own and I felt ashamed that I wasn't able to.
But I'll say this, I don't regret for a second that I ended up getting help. I was a little embarrassed about it first but I soon got over that. I still have some days where anxiety is in the back of my mind, but I'm a lot better now (and I graduated).
If you're struggling in school, just know that even if you get kicked out that doesn't mean it's the end for you if you honestly want to finish.
13. Impressive Zeros
I was expelled the first time I went to college, back in the '90s.
I remember on orientation day, we walked by the fraternities and my dad got all excited. Walked up to the Phi Kappa Taus—they were pretty cool. Acted all interested in me.
I didn't look around anywhere else, hell, I was 17 and very intimidated. I rushed them—and turns out, they were massive party animals.
I lived and worked 40 minutes away from school, and had a girlfriend back home (so far, right?). I scheduled all my classes at 7-11am. It was hard to get up at five and drive into school and pay attention in a 1,000 seat lecture hall.
So I started to stay at the frat house and blow off my classes.
The first semester I got a 0.0. The next, I got a .33 (one D!) I wasn't the only one expelled from school that year... me and four other guys were competing for the lowest GPA.
What a waste. Stupid college is wasted on the young.
I went back in my 30s and got my degrees, but I wasted a tremendous amount of time working crappy jobs for crappy people.
12. Just a Draft
I was expelled three years ago from a small private liberal arts university two weeks before I was supposed to graduate.
I was in an upper-level algorithms course for my Computer Science major, and instead of a final, the professor assigned a large research project on an extremely niche area of the subject. I had other classes to worry about finishing as well, so admittedly I didn't prioritize the paper as much as I should have. Three weeks before it was due, the professor required us to submit a rough draft so he could critique and help us.
My topic was so niche that I was only able to find one text on it, but it was a really good source with a very long mathematical proof, like three pages worth, so obviously I was going to cite this proof as the fulcrum for my paper—there was no way I could do this sort of math on my own. I could only find a physical copy of this source from the library, there was no digital copy, so in order to use and cite it in my paper, I would have to transcribe three pages of mathematical proof by typing it in.
That sounds easy enough, but the thing with mathematical papers is they use a lot of symbols, it's how the math is demonstrated. I used a language called LaTeX, which allows you to input things and make everything look nice, but it's time-consuming. This took me nearly four hours, but I finally had a digital copy of my proof. I didn't have time to write anything more than an abstract for my rough draft, and I cited my source in the works cited section, so I turned in this to my professor as if to say, "I don't have much, but this proof was hard to acquire and I will be basing my paper around it".
He calls me in the next day to inform me he has reported me to the academic affairs council for plagiarism. I am dumbfounded. I explained my reasoning for what I turned in and how I had no intention of plagiarizing work that I clearly cited, on a rough draft no less, to which his response was, "That is for the council to decide."
I appear before the Council, try to explain everything in layman's terms, how I had no idea it's even possible to be found guilty of plagiarism for an incomplete work, how I would never try to steal intellectual work two weeks before I'm supposed to graduate, how if I had known this was possible I would I have turned in nothing, but they are having none of it. I will never forget how they asked me why I, "didn't just photocopy the textbook and submit that."
Given that I had a derogatory mark on my record from my sophomore year when I (stupidly) cheated off my friend's test, they found grounds to immediately remove me from campus. As in, they told me I had six hours to pack my things and leave or they would call the police and I would be found guilty of trespassing. I cried as I had to quickly pack my things and move back in with my parents who were beside themselves.
I later saw a rumor on the campus YikYak that I had been expelled for rape, which really drove the dagger into my heart. My girlfriend left me later that week and the silence I received from friends was deafening. I had been deeply involved in the campus community, at one point serving as the Vice President of the Student Body, serving on the committee that selected the new University President, and many other groups on campus. I was to be one of the three students who spoke at the graduation ceremony, and I was to carry our class banner as we entered the ceremony.
Thankfully my story has a happy ending (so far). By the time my classmates were crossing the stage, I had already found a job and was gainfully employed. Where I had been myopic about my future after college, I now suddenly had a fire to regain what was taken from me. I'm on track to finish my bachelor's this year while also working at a Fortune 500. I've never shared this story with anyone who doesn't know me closely, and I'm hesitant to speak to a professional counselor about my struggles with this and an abusive ex-girlfriend, and perhaps that's something I should do. I hope someday I'm able to prove that you can lose everything and still persevere and rebuild. Every year on April 25th, the day they expelled me, I take myself out to a nice restaurant and promise not to let something like that happen again.
11. This Story of The Idiot
This is not my story. It's the story of a classmate. We will nickname him The Idiot.
The Idiot was the top student in my promo in journalism school. This was a good school, known to create good journalists. This was because we had four mandatory internships, in four different medias. The school already had partnerships with said medias, and choose the internship for you, based on your preferences, your skills and your results.
The Idiot got the best internship there was, at my country's most important newspaper. Think something like The New York Times.
Three weeks into it, The Idiot is caught for plagiarism. He is fired from the internship, and immediately expelled from the school, in shame.
10. Accidentally Getting Someone Else Kicked Out
I unintentionally got another student expelled. We were critiquing websites we had built when I noticed one that looked exactly like mine with a few tweaks. I popped open the source and noticed it was a line for line copy of my code with a few changes to the CSS.
I brought it up to the professor to protect myself in case he noticed them (though I doubt I would have been suspected, mine was more cohesive. The changes he did make didn't make the site appealing). Anyway, apparently, it was his third time plagiarizing after twice you go "on trial" with the school. If you don't get expelled then, a third time is the nail in the coffin.
9. Ra Ra Riot
I got expelled in 2004 for inciting a riot.
GettyImages
8. Just How Much Is Too Much?
I knew a guy who got expelled from an Ivy League for getting caught with too much cocaine. He works at California Pizza Kitchen now.
7. Nightmare University
Failing grades, insane roommates, and theft accusations. I bombed out due to massive stress, appealed, got back in.
I was going to the Art Institute of Philadelphia, one of the few places I legitimately consider hell on earth. The school paired me up with various roommates who were had severe issues (refusing to shower six months straight, hardcore drug addicts, etc.).
Nightmare fuel.
The entire dorm was terrible. People were constantly kicking or punching body-sized holes into and through walls. Elevators would drop multiple floors when you were in them. It was a nightmare. And then, one winter, a fire alarm started going off every single damn night around 2:00 am and we'd have to evac the building into the dead of winter. Nothing quite wakes you up like fire alarms and freezing cold.
I mentally started to lose it. My grades dropped, and I failed the semester because I could never sleep. Between the fire alarms and overwhelming funk I was getting extremely worn down and stressed.
This continued on.
One of the deans calls me in one day and accuses me of credit card theft. According to the school, I had stolen a credit card from one of my roommates... and racked up a massive bill at Lane Bryant and they had proof.
Lane Bryant, which I didn't know at the time, was a women's clothing store that specializes in plus size apparel. It was implied I was buying these for my girlfriend, but I had to point out to the school that I was gay. They changed their story to the fact that I must have been buying them for myself, implying I was a cross dresser. I kind of lost my mind, and asked them to provide ANY shred of proof to back up their claims. They had none, but proceeded to harass me about this for weeks, demanding I pay back the money I NEVER took or they'd have to escalate things.
Then I ended up with a roommate who was caught growing drugs (shrooms) in my closet. He got off, but the school decided that chaperoning the guy was NOT their responsibility, and the guy ended up stealing half my stuff, to which the school was like "Did you have insurance? No? HAHA! Not our problem. Please get out of my office."
After that everything tanked. The stress piled on, and the plurality of crappiness that exuded from the school got to me and I failed out. As I said, I was able to appeal, get back in and later graduate.
Bonus Drama: A few semesters after all this happened the school paired me up with two roommates whose previous roommate pulled a gun on them and threatened to kill them. School moved the two guys into my room, and the guy who threatened to kill them broke into our building and got into my apartment.
This school was an absolute nightmare.
6. Doing It All On The First Night
A guy on my floor in the dorms got expelled within the first night of move-in day.
Since it was the first night away from parents and we were all new to college, there were a ton of pop-up parties around the university.
Apparently, this kid took weed, shrooms, and acid all in one night. Then came back near his dorm building and started heavily drinking. His roommate found him and brought him back to the dorm room. The kid proceeded to go on a very bad trip before vomiting everywhere and passing out. He apparently ODed hard.
911 was obviously called and the police showed up and saw the sheer number of drugs (I think it was weed and shrooms) this kid had hidden in his dorm along with beer, and even a pocket knife (that's illegal on campus).
He was taken to detox and was heavily charged since he was a minor and all. He was expelled before he even left detox apparently. His parents came and picked up his stuff, I don't know if he was banned from campus too or if he was just embarrassed.
He became a legend on our floor.
5. Jesus Christ Didn’t Rat People Out
Oh.. Here we go.. So I attended BYU from 2006-2009. For those that do not know BYU is an incredibly religious school with some pretty insane rules. One of those is the Honor Code, It has made the news recently so I won't go into detail about what it all entails but here is the gist of it.. ANYTHING THAT YOU THINK IS FUN ABOUT COLLEGE... DON'T DO IT.
Anyway, I was starting my senior year and we had a party, I was one of those party kids that had a place in Salt Lake that we would go up to and get crazy for a weekend and then go and pretend it never happened. Party was great, the guy to girl ratio was awesome, and then people started pairing off.... One girl ended up drunk texting her roommates (classic drunk girl crap) and before I knew it I had 13 missed calls from the ecclesiastical leader.
Whatever, we all knew at one point this was going to happen. Monday rolls around and I get dragged out of class like we're in high school all over again and escorted to the Honor Code office (I joke you not... There is an entire office at BYU that is solely dedicated to enforcing no drinking, no sex, no cheating, and to make sure you go to church). I sit down in the office knowing fully well what is going to happen. The guy asks me who all was at the party, Which I thought was odd.
Apparently, the girl that was texting could only remember my name in the whole fiasco and I was the only one that was called in. I was given the option to tell the school who all was involved at the party and stay in school, or I could not tell on them and be kicked out. Now, this enraged me at the time, a religion that focuses solely on "Christ, choices, and repentance" wants me to force others to confess?
I tore into the honor code cop letting off an exquisite string of "screw you"s and screw this at close to the top of my lungs. After that, I was escorted off campus, told to pack my things and leave. Worked out pretty well though in the end.
4. Ice Cream Party
I was expelled from all college residences for stumbling home from the pub, finding an unlocked door in the food hall, taking three 10-liter tubs of ice cream and going around on a bike blasting Greensleeves pretending to be an ice-cream truck at 2am.
GettyImages
3. Faking The Apology
Plagiarizing a two-paragraph apology letter I was forced to write, expressing why I was sorry about drinking alcohol in the dorms.
2. Don’t Laugh At Those Going Back To School
Called the professor who was several years younger than me a little craphead while in class, for cracking a joke about why I was coming back to college after so long (I was in the military serving in Afghanistan).
But I won the appeal...
EDIT: To give a little backstory to the situation, we were assigned a group project, of which I was older than everyone by nearly ten years. We got to a part where we were discussing technology, and the kids in my group were snickering about how I didn't have a cell phone until my senior year of high school, and describing the old Nokias. It was in good fun and I was actually enjoying acting like an old-timer ( I was around 30).
The Professor heard the laughing and came to see what it was all about. One of the girls repeated the conversation, and he made a comment along the lines of "I guess he joined the military because he couldn't make it into college the first time around." Now mind you, I WAS in college before I went into the military. I left for real reasons. I come from a very poor town and had no parents to pay for my college. I knew that if I joined and did my four years, I would get my GI bill, which would prevent me from going into massive student loan debt. This was also not long after 9/11, so I was also feeling very patriotic and wanted to serve my country. Of course, after I got out, I went straight to work in another career field, and it took some time for me to go back to school.
1. Making Money Off The Dean’s Infidelity
I got expelled when I caught the dean giving a co-ed a mustache ride and videoed it, then sent the video to his wife. Evidently, the University bylaws forbid video recording in the administrative office and used that as an excuse to expel me. Fortunately, my parents are rich and we lawyered up and the University settled. Made a ton of money off it and started my own business.
Source: