Student's blog on 'racist' professor goes viral, inquiry launched

A Latina undergraduate student, who hails from a university in Boston, wrote a blog on her WordPress, after her professor handed back her research paper and, in front of the class, accused her of plagiarism. Tiffany Martinez, the undergraduate student from Suffolk University, wrote in her blog that the professor had circled the word 'hence' and had written, "This is not your word", underlining 'Not' twice. And at the top of her paper, the professor had written, "Please go back & indicate where you cut & paste (sic)."

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Martinez, an aspiring professor, said that the professor spoke loudly enough that the students at the back of the room heard, and asked if she was doing well after class.

Martinez recounted the incident in her blog post titled 'Academia, Love Me Back', which has been shared over 1,000 times since it was posted on Thursday evening (US time).

"My last name and appearance immediately instils a set of biases before I have the chance to open my mouth.

As a minority in my classrooms, I continuously hear my peers and professors use language that both covertly, and overtly oppresses the communities I belong to. Therefore, I do not always feel safe when I attempt to advocate for my people in these spaces," she wrote.

Martinez also described how the incident made her doubt her capabilities as a scholar. "I am hurting because my professor assumed that the only way I could produce content as good as this was to "cut and paste." I am hurting because for a brief moment I believed them," she added.

She has not spoken with the professor since the incident, but has brought it to the attention of the chair of Suffolk University's sociology department, who has launched an investigation. "The head of the department is very familiar with my work and my writing," Martínez said. "He looked over my paper and had nothing but good things to say," Martinez said during the course of the BuzzFeed interview.