The Scam Of Richmond Gabriel University - Greatest Trick The Devil Ever Pulled? - PART 1

Here we are. Again. The darkness had me. Again. My heart and spirit were completely broken, and I just didn’t know what to do. Again. It felt as though I was back where I started. I remembered that gnawing sense of hopelessness. I remembered the vast emptiness of a life filled with echoes of past trauma. It was a life without meaning…without love…without feeling. I felt it wash over me, clogging every single pore. I felt the stink, the rain, the frogs, the roaches, the rats…like contaminated sludge flowing through my veins. I could feel it in the walls…I could feel it in the ground beneath my feet. I felt saturated by it. I remembered that it was my life. It was my home. I had found the light in a place where I did not want to venture, but now I had lost it. Again. I had lost the meaning that justified all the suffering. I felt like I had nothing left. Again…

It’s funny, for the life of me, I could not figure out where I went wrong. But if you read my story, you might be able to see what I could not.

Richmond Gabriel University (formerly All Saints University, College of Medicine SVG) was once a beautiful campus. I was so proud to be a student. I was so proud to be part of an institution that would one day help me to become a competent and successful medical physician. It was not just a privilege. It was a blessing. When I was accepted into this institution, I was overwhelmed with emotion. I finally had an opportunity to pursue my dream. I finally had a chance at a better life. I finally had a future. I finally was able to do what most people believed I couldn’t. I managed to beat the odds again.

What I didn’t realize, was that my future and the future of many other students would one day be upended by the same people who took our money and promised to make our needs their top priority. To be honest, it had never really occurred to me that I was going to get royally screwed. To be fair, none of us saw this coming till it was too late.

Just so you know, I am only scratching the surface here. What Richmond Gabriel University did to us, goes deeper than you could ever imagine. And I need you to imagine as hard as you can.

Deceit…That was what we had signed up for the moment we enrolled into Richmond Gabriel University. Lies…That was what we’d received in exchange for our tuition fees. False promises…That was what we were given as perks for participating in the illusion. And it was a perfect one. We, the students, had been lied to by Richmond Gabriel University at every juncture, and despite being asked numerous times, the president (Dr. Mane Paulpillai), the administration, the dean of student affairs (Dr. Gomattie Chunilall) and the board of directors had refused to provide specifics about plans for the school's future, assuming that there was even one.

You know, they say that the greatest trick the devil ever played was making the world believe that he didn’t exist. Well, I guess it’s safe to say that this was his new greatest trick…

The last student body meeting that we ever had as an institution, took place online on the 12th of April 2024, and ended in disaster. The purpose of the meeting was “to address the ongoing and upcoming changes and restructuring of RGU”. The board members left us all even more confused with their ambiguous plans, as per fricking usual. Some of the issues raised by students included:

When are the campuses going to be reopened?

Why are we being charged for services that the school isn’t providing considering that we do not have any infrastructure or resources available to us?

Why are professors absent to class and, hardly teaching when they are present?

Why is RGU hiring unqualified professors to teach subjects they know very little about?

Why are we being charged full tuition fees when we are not getting proper tuition?

Why are clinical rotations being placed on hold?

When is the institution going to be accredited?

Why are students being forced to remain on the island considering that there was no face-to-face teaching taking place for months and all classes were online?

What is the reason for the sudden rise in tuition fees?

I mean, if you think about it, like really think about it, raising school fees made a lot of sense, especially when there was no campus to go to, no access to educational resources, no functioning student union government, no student insurance. It’s as if we never even existed.

To the surprise of no one, instead of addressing these concerns, the school’s board members suddenly vanished from the meeting without any explanation. It happened so quickly, I think even David Copperfield would have been proud. What a spectacle that was. Ever since then, the administration had chosen to ignore any and all requests for face to face meetings that had anything to do with the running of the school. We had already gathered that RGU was hiding something. And it became pretty clear that whatever it was, they were never going to tell us. Why would they? Expecting RGU to be honest and forthcoming, was like expecting a six month old baby to be perfectly articulate.

When you think things could not get any worse, not very soon after, on Friday 12th July, 2024, the United States Attorney’s Office of Northern District of Illinois, put out a press release that one of our school's board members, Dr. Sameer Suhail, along with three other defendants were charged in an alleged fifteen-million-dollar embezzlement scheme out of a Chicago Hospital. Dr. Sameer Suhail, the same guy who stood in front of us dressed in a fancy suit, showering himself with moral virtue, claiming that he was very well connected, and that we should not worry because he would be bringing us all into the promise land. Well, I’m paraphrasing of course.

At this point, the only logical question to ask was, “What the hell is really going on here?” When we were finally informed about what had happened, it was almost two months after the fact, and even then, we were still being drip-fed the truth. The vagueness of this administration was overwhelming. If you think I’m over-exaggerating, see for yourself.

What angered me the most, was that they were acting as though this piece of information would not have any kind of effect on our school’s reputation whatsoever, and even more so, on the students themselves. I suppose we were just supposed to go to bed and forget it ever happened, but believe it or not, we had much bigger problems.

Some of our students were stuck here on the island for a long time, probably still are, suffering, unable to fly home because of lack of finances, unable to continue their lives because Richmond Gabriel University swindled them all out of their hard-earned monies, with false promises of a bright and prosperous future.

Meanwhile, our fellow medical schools, the residents, as well as the government of St. Vincent looked down on us because of our affiliation with the institution that was Richmond Gabriel University. And honestly, who could blame them? Our lack of candor, professionalism, empathy and competence had traveled far and wide. Our tainted reputation brought disgrace to all that uttered the name of, or even the thought of Richmond Gabriel University. All we could do was bow our heads in shame.

We had been reduced to charity cases, damaged goods, living in stasis, surviving on RGU's breadcrumbs, with the understandable, but severely naive hope that if we gave Richmond Gabriel University a chance, maybe, just maybe, given time, they might turn things around and get their act together. “Trust us,” they said. And we did, against our better judgement. Despite information to the contrary, we still dared to hope. We still decided to give the benefit of the doubt, as if we didn’t learn anything from the past.

Hope. The quintessential human emotion, ultimately revealed as the source of our greatest strength, and our greatest weakness. Take a look at where that had gotten us. No really, take a look:

May 2024. The start of a new semester. We were told that classes were going to begin on the Belair campus. Finally! Online classes for medical school were just not working out for us. It was good to resume face-to-face learning. Excitedly, we walked into the campus for the first day of class, only to find it abandoned. No furniture. No lab equipment. No staff. No wifi. No electricity. No air-conditioning units. No school bus. They even took the damn toilet paper from the bathrooms. All they left behind for us was a smelly cadaver in the Anatomy lab. No note. No emails. No phone calls. No explanation. Nothing. All efforts to contact the school to find out what was going on were futile.

Richmond Gabriel University turned “ghosting” into an art-form. “Trust” it seemed, wasn’t without a sense of irony.

Medical school was definitely not what I thought it would be. At least not this one. The administration was as indifferent to our wellbeing as rock is to water. It was never a question of whether they cared about us or not. The question was whether or not they knew we even existed. From my experience, neglect and indifference caused a lot more damage than outright dislike. While I appreciated the fact that our school tuition was cheaper than most medical schools in the Caribbean, the phrase, "you get what you pay for", didn’t even do justice here, because we got nothing but heartache and suffering. If this isn't the very definition of a “scam”, then I don't know what is…

To Be Continued…

Your thoughts?