The day after the graduation ceremony, the university announced revisions to its Faculty Guidelines for Graduate Student Supervision.
Among all the changes, there was one new sentence.
Faculty advisors may not delay a student's graduation without legitimate academic justification. Any extension must be reviewed and approved by the departmental faculty committee.
It was short. But I knew exactly what those words meant.
They meant future graduate students would never have to wake up at three in the morning to analyze data, only to be denied a dissertation defense indefinitely.
They would never again be trapped by someone saying, "I'm doing this for your own good."
They wouldn't have to spend five years discovering what "I treat you like one of my own students" really meant.
I stood in
