College student refuses to let an entitled teammate cheat off his work on a group project after she ghosts them for 4 months: ‘[She] said I 'owe' her credit'

Author image for Jesse Kessenheimer
Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Feb 13, 2026 6:00 PM EST

An entitled university student expected her team to pick up her slack on a group project worth 50% of their grade, but after she ghosted them for months, they refused to even include her name on the presentation. 

Group projects are the worst. Although they prepare students to work together as a team, they also prepare young minds to learn to navigate freeloaders and try-hards. I suppose that means that group projects get college kids ready for the real world in a lot of ways, because out here in the adultsphere, there are more credit leeches than you'd think.  

When I was in university, I had a lot of group projects, specifically because I studied Film and Media as a major. I know it sounds like a fake course where you only watch movies all day, but ultimately, it was an audiovisual version of Literature, Philosophy, and Art rolled up into one course. That meant that my group project teammates and I often butted heads, disagreeing in a variety of ways on the direction our project should go in the first place. 

That leads, usually, to the director's role. Destined to be the bad guy, but keeping everyone else on track, the director of every group project is the one who creates the Google Docs, sets up meeting times, and ensures that everyone shows up to work on time or at least completes their portion of the project promptly. Without someone taking charge, things slip through the cracks, but having a powerful leader at the helm also pretty much guarantees that you're going to have at least one slacker in the group, one lowlife who refuses to work unless whipped into shape or shamed for their laziness. Creating unwanted anxiety over the project, slackers usually live scot-free, enjoying the perks of riding the coattails of everyone else in the group for the sake of their own grade. 

However, once in a blue moon, students will rally against the slacker, refusing to let them garnish any credit from work they didn't do. 

Like the college kids in this next story, who refused to even include the name of their third groupmate on a group project because she completely ghosted them for 4 months. Crawling back just days before the due date, she insisted she could put her "spin" on things, but the work was already done, the project already completed. She offered too little, too late, and for that, she may just have to retake the class. There's no waiting for your friends to bail you out if you burned the bridge between you. She was on her own, now. 

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  • Students working on a group project together.
    via Yan Krukau

    Students working on a group project together.

    (Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.)

  • AITA for removing my classmate's name from our final project after she vanished for a month?
    via tinypaperking
  • I'm in a university course where our grade basically hinges on a final group capstone and a morning defense. Our group was three people: me, "Tara," and "Jon." At the start we split tasks in a shared Google doc,
    via tinypaperking
  • University students gathering around the calendar to schedule dates to meet for their group project.
    via Yan Krukau

    University students gathering around the calendar to schedule dates to meet for their group project.

    (Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.)

  • made a simple timeline, and agreed to do quick check ins twice a week. Tara was normal for the first couple weeks, leaving comments and adding a few links, then she just went silent. Like fully gone. No replies
    via tinypaperking
  • in the doc, no replies to texts, nothing. Jon and I kept going because the professor is strict and this project is a huge chunk of the grade, and we couldn't risk tanking it because someone decided to ghost. After about
    via tinypaperking
  • two weeks of nothing we rewrote the section that was assigned to Tara because it was still an outline with half sentences. We built the slides, fixed citations, ran through the presentation, and the document history for the last month is
    via tinypaperking
  • basically just my name and Jon's name doing all the edits. The only "Tara" activity is older, and a bunch of tasks still show her name next to them like little reminders of what never got
    via tinypaperking
  • done. I was stressed and honestly kind of hurt because Tara and I have been friends since freshman year, so it didn't feel like a random teammate issue, it felt personal.
    via tinypaperking
  • Then yesterday, one hour before the deadline, Tara texts me: "hey sorry been busy. send me what you have and I'll toss in somethng. also keep my name on it, obviously." I told her the
    via tinypaperking
  • project was finished and we already covered everything. She replied "you're obligated, we're a team" and then "don't be weird about it, you owe me." She asked for the slide deck so she could "add her touch" and said
    via tinypaperking
  • she'd show up for the defense anyway. I said no because it was literally minutes before upload and we had a defense at 9am. I also asked where she'd been, and she just said "stuff" and got mad that I was "interrogating"
    via tinypaperking
  • her instead of helping her last minute. So I submitted the final files with only my and Jon's names, and I emailed the TA a short heads up that Tara had been absent for most of the work and we didn't want to
    via tinypaperking
  • misrepresent contributions, and that the edit history shows it. This morning before the defense, Tara walked in, saw the printed title slide, and went ice cold. She hissed that I humiliated her on purpose, that
    via tinypaperking
  • friends don't do this, that she was "going through it" and I should've covered for her without questions. She said I ruined her grade and she's going to report me for "sabotage." I didn't yell back,
    via tinypaperking
  • College student presenting his project to the professor for a final grade.
    via Yan Krukau

    College student presenting his project to the professor for a final grade.

    (Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.)

  • but I told her disappearing for a month and returning with demands isn't friendship either. Jon is backing me up, but a couple classmates said I should've left her name on it to
    via tinypaperking
  • avoid drama and dealt with it after. Now I'm sitting here waiting to go in, feeling sick like I crossed a line even though the paper trail is real. AITA for taking her name off?
    via tinypaperking
  • Junior-Equipment-8... NTA, she was banking on your "friendship" to do all the work and let her take the credit. She knew what she was doing.
    via Junior-Equipment-8
  • tinypaperking OP. That's what stings. If she'd said she was overwhelmed or asked for a smaller task, I would've worked with her. Instead she disappeared, left us rewriting her section, then showed up right before the deadline asking for the deck and saying I "owe" her credit. The edit log is basically me and Jon for weeks, so putting her name on felt like lying to the TA.
    via tinypaperking
  • Plastic-Ad-5171 Nope. As a former academic judicial officer, keeping her name on the project would be tantamount to helping her cheat. If she was having problems, it was on her to communicate to the team, the professor and TA to work out
    via Plastic-Ad-5171
  • an alternate arrangement to complete the work. That she didn't do any of those things means she wasn't interested in doing the required course work and thought she could cheat her way into a better grade. NTA, and I hope she grows up.
    via Plastic-Ad-5171
  • tsidaysi Just be honest. You can never go wrong being honest. I am an accounting professor and every accountant will tell you we get stuck doing most of the work on group projects especially in capstone classes where you don't pass you don't graduate. She can work it out with Prof.
    via tsidaysi

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students group projects ghosted entitled college
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