My university study group is trying to fire one of our members.
By @tesskk · School
We have a big semester-long group project and one person is not pulling their weight at all. The rest of us have been picking up the slack, and we're debating whether we should formally go to the professor and ask to have him removed from our group.
The full story
I'm in a senior-level class with a group project that's 40% of our final grade. We've been working on it for about two months, with another month to go. There are four of us in the group, and one member has consistently under-delivered. He misses meetings, turns in his sections late (if at all), and the work he does submit is so sloppy we have to rewrite it anyway. We've tried talking to him about it multiple times. We've sent him reminders, offered to help him with his sections, and created detailed to-do lists with clear deadlines. Nothing has worked. Last week he completely missed a major deadline for our internal draft, which forced the rest of us to scramble for two days to get his part done. Now, two of my other group members want to go to the professor and essentially fire him from our group. The syllabus says the professor can intervene in cases of non-participation, which might mean the student fails the project and we get graded on the work of the three of us. My hesitation is that this feels like a really extreme step that could have a big impact on his grade for the whole course. We're all trying to graduate, and I'm not sure if it's our place to potentially cause someone to fail. At the same time, we're tired of carrying him and risking our own grades.
How people voted
- OP Is Right — 28% (69 votes)
- Both Messy — 42% (102 votes)
- OP Is Wrong — 30% (74 votes)
Readers say “Both Messy” (42%) — 245 votes and 5 comments so far.
What people are saying
@noelkay — It’s kind of you to worry about his grade, but you have to protect your own too. You've given him plenty of chances.
@noelyy — let him cook see what happens
@tesskinda — Cut him. He's dragging the team down.
@gusok2 — Have you tried setting up a meeting with him and the professor all together?
@gabeactually — lol reminds me of my senior project, our guy submitted his part in comic sans and we just turned it in like that
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