செதுக்குதல்
Sethukkuthal (carving)
Content note: academic ableism, appropriation, medical gaslighting, performative activism
A university with a medical school enrolled, employed, and treated an Eelam Tamil American fibromyalgic woman as a graduate student, part-time lecturer, and a patient, respectively. Due to her failing health and anti-Tamil pogroms in Sri Lanka, her productivity began to decline. She went to her professor and supervisor for help, and they said, "There are certain expectations of graduate-level scholarship and academic work, and you aren't sick enough to not be meeting them. Come back with a diagnosis." She went to the medical school, and her doctor said, "Your ailment is so common, we call it graduate school syndrome. You're Indian? I bet you’re very hard on yourself. You're under so much pressure, you've turned your stress into pain and fatigue." The woman returned to her professor and supervisor, who said, "I sympathize with disability and trauma, but you're hardly persecuted yourself, and without official disability documentation, I'm afraid I can't help you. Without improvement, we'll be terminating you in May." By May, the woman's pain and fatigue were debilitating despite her self-medicating, and her people were being indiscriminately slaughtered. She overdoses. After her death, the university issued a statement and instated a week of events in her honor; her professor and supervisor praised her compositions; her case was integrated into the medical curriculum. People felt virtuous acting on her posthumous behalf. Thus, whenever someone like her joined the university, that person was swiftly executed to provide the community with another opportunity to bask in their virtue.