To Professor Jim Owens: Thank you so much for leaving AUIS!

Jim Owens sits in his office
at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani
Photo courtesy of AUIS Voice

Only the tittle of this article should shed tears on your eyes and say, “What a terrible person I am.” We, a group of the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani who have taken classes with you before, must seem very selfish to bit you our fare well this way. People might assert that we are just horrible people to, instead of appreciating the time and all the contributions you have offered us so far, tell you we hope to never see you again. However, the question, “Why do we think about you that way?” should also be considered. There are many reasons behind that. Bear with us for a while please!

First of all, you, professor Jim Owens, have been the best and real example of the most disturbed, unfair, and offensive professor we have ever imagined. In four years of our college, we not only didn’t have a professor like you, but also couldn’t even imagine that there might be such discourteous people like you in this planet. We understand that you are experienced and sometimes look smart. However, we feel like all the classes we have taken with you has just been a completely ridiculous and just waste of time. Now, as we gather together to write this article, we really want to recall a moment when we had fun with you, but it is too sad that none of us can remember even a single good memory about you. So, thank you so much in deep of our hearts for leaving us!

Secondly, regardless of how much we suffered for being your students, we truly want to know and find some students who would have positive thoughts about you. However, almost the entire student body seemed so happy about your leaving.  All the words we heard from those students were, “Thank God! I can’t believe he is leaving. I feel like a million dollar. Thank you for telling me about such a great news.” On the other hand, we observed the student’s facebook walls to understand their reactions about some of the other professors and faculty staff members who left AUIS as well. Guess what? Their good-bye letters for them made all of us even cry. But, what a horrible and sad moment for professor Owens who everyone says, “Thank God he is leaving. What wonderful news to hear about Owens’ leaving!” Man! You could leave us with completely different feelings, couldn’t you? You could be our friend and father instead of our enemy. You could use class time teaching us some stuff about our professions instead of encouraging us to hate what we study. Just like most of the other professors we have and used to have, you could be a fair professor instead of always making war on us and treat us like we are not humans.

It is worth mentioning that we heard from few women around the campus who were saying some good words about professor Owens. They were a bit sad too about his leaving. Guess why? Well, it is too easy to tell. Women were the only one who could pass and get strong As and Bs without so much effort. We want to be more clearer on this point that we have so much respect for every single woman at AUIS and we truly believe that there are way more smart women than men here at AUIS. However, it is just professor Owens who acted so differently toward men and women in a way that we, men, felt like to not be humans while we were sitting on his classes. For example, it was just so bothering for us when one of the men asked a great and even challenging question, yet professor Owens not only refused to answer him, but also disturbed and embraced him in front of the class. At the same time, professor Owens was too carious and ready to spend the whole class time answering even basic and simple questions that student women were asking. That was not the only difference professor Owens made between men and women by the way. He did the same in terms of grading papers. It was enough for a female student to fill the space with some words that, sometimes, should not have been even relevant to the question, to get full credits. However, male students should really have complete and precise answers to the entire question to get a partial credit. So, we really recommend the students of those universities where professor Owens will be teaching to not take classes with him unless they are women. If you are a woman, don’t miss a chance to get a strong A with him.

Last but not least, we are, again, not selfish to write and publish this article. We decided about publishing this article for two reasons. First, we really don’t want to write another letter like this for any of the other professors who will leave us in the future. We truly want to cry for them as we have cried for many of them before. We really want to tell them please come back to us as soon as possible instead of saying please don’t even think of coming back to us. Professor Owens, secondly, we really want to show how your true and best friends we are to accept being the mirror of your actions and attitudes at least for a while and let you know about what kind of person you are even though you might have noticed that. We hope we will be able to help you change your attitudes so that your knowledge and behaviours will inspire people toward love instead of hatred. Again, thank you for leaving our university and please don’t ever think of stepping back on not only our campus, but also our country. We love both our country and campus too much to have you walking through it.