Computer science student says their refusal to share credit on a group project—after their assigned partner did no work—made their partner fail out of the class and program: ' I accidentally ruined his whole degree'

Just a small editor's note here: 

I have made some small edits to the quotes from the original poster for readability. 

I have marked all changes, except for the quotations I placed around the source's own references to their group project member, whom they have dubbed “Random Guy”.

This was the TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read) that the student gave as a summary of their own story:

TL;DR: ["Random guy"] does barely any work on group project, gets mad at me, decides to do the next group project alone, doesn't do it, and failing the class ends up costing him his whole degree and career.

They go on to tell how, sometime in the late 2010s, they studied computer science at a foreign university. While studying there, they took an English-language elective course on machine learning. 

They say that, in this era pre-AI craze, students were mostly disinterested in this class.

This was before ChatGPT was a thing, so most students didn't care.

Source: u/BSThrowaway-13 via Reddit 

They had intentionally taken the English-language class too, since most of the students preferred classes in the university's native language; they knew it would be a smaller, tighter-knit classroom setting.

While they enjoyed their time in the class, soon they were faced with something every dedicated but slightly introverted student dreads: The group project.

[It] was a small group, mostly […] foreign students, [with a] very enthusiastic professor, it was great. Up until the group project came.

We had to pair up, and I didn't know anyone in that class, so I paired up with a foreign student, ["Random Guy"] who was [seated] next to me. Typical rich daddy's boy type, but whatever, I am good at working in teams.

When the first presentation rolled around, the student did the research for their project, and their partner “Random Guy” prepared the slideshow for the presentation.

We were going to do both do the presentation. Well, the day before, he mysteriously fell ill, and couldn't do the presentation. Of course, I was like fine, it happens, I'll just do it, just send me the slides. 

But when their partner called out sick, they were left to do the presentation alone. The slides the partner, “Random Guy,” sent were low-effort and full of mistakes… Because the slides were credited to “Random Guy," he got marked down for the mistakes.

Whereas the student got credit for their research. 

The partner did not take this well.

Well, it was a disaster, half the graphs I sent him were mislabeled on it, sources missing, etc. I updated it, and also changed the credits, as [per] the professor's rule, you had to clearly state who [worked] on what. So instead of “random guy”'s name, [my] name", it now looked like “Research: [my] name - Slides: ”random guy"'s name, [my] name - Presentation: [my] name". So yea, he got marked down by the professor, which he proceeded to cuss me out for in text.

But, for the final project, much more effort was involved. The student described the task at hand in their post as follows:

We had to build and train a deep neural net to diagnose […] different types of diabetes from lab results, it was actually really interesting, but a lot of work even for a group of two or three undergraduate students. It is also the majority of your grade.

Groups were supposed to remain the same for this stage of the project, but the student says that his group project member, still blaming them for his low grade on the previous presentation, demanded that he be allowed to do the project alone. 

“Random guy” raises his hand, and asks if he can swap groups or do it alone. 

The professor allowed this, but warned him that the same level and depth as a full group effort would be required.

After some convincing, the professor agrees, with the stipulation, that even if you do it alone, he will grade you the same […] no leniency.

Here the student describes their decision:

This is where I complied with what “random guy” seemingly wanted…

They resolved that they would do as “random guy” wished and do the project alone too.

We had like a full month I think, but I did it all, fully alone in about two weeks, because, well, it was a really interesting project. 

Often, in such cases, the teacher refuses to intervene, telling the students something like they need to “work it out” amongst themselves. Sometimes even promising to fail all the members of the group if they can't come to an agreement. 

When this happens, it gives the non-contributing members a lot of leverage because, well, they didn't do the work and would fail anyway if the rest of their group members had gotten their way with the teacher. So, the other group members are forced to let the other student get away with not contributing.

Luckily, the student says this was not the case here. The professor, likely seeing the dysfunction in the group, had allowed them to work separately for separate grades. 

Likely also recognizing the situation the student now faced, the professor was very available and helpful in the student's effort to handle the extent of the project without group members to support them.

I also have to give credit to the professor, cause he was really helpful with it, he made extra office hours available just for the class, where he'd be really helpful with every question anyone had, you just had to show up and ask. I even went a bit beyond, researched some extra stuff on my own to improve it further then I could with just the techniques we learned in the class. I hand it in, two weeks before the due date, and promptly forget about it…

But, right before the project was due, the partner came crawling back…

Well, who slides into the DMs of yours truly two […] days before the deadline? Obviously “random guy”. 

The now ex-partner attempted to appeal to the student to let him have credit for their work, going for the emotional angle… The student says that the following exchange occurred.

He really lays on the sweet talk thick, wanting to join up for the project. I tell him sorry about that, but I already handed it in, nothing I can do. He asks to look at my project, "just to see, I won't copy it of course", to which I obviously refuse, there is no way I am risking being fired from university, which was a very real risk for cheating. 

He proceeds to metaphorically bawl his eyes out, telling me he'll get [kicked out of] the foreign exchange program if he fails this class, and this is already his last chance with his family, so they'll stop funding his studies. 

I told him I have a full time job, cause I have to pay for everything myself, so he can shove his complaints wherever, but in truth, I thought he was just lying.

Predictably, the ex-project member failed the class, and this did end up being his “last chance."

Well, he did end up failing the class, and the whole reason I am writing this post is because after reminiscing about this story with an old university acquaintance I randomly bumped into at a bar yesterday, he managed to find “random guy” on Facebook, and apparently, he's been bouncing around sh**y minimum wage jobs for years, so I guess he was telling the truth after all.

But is it really the student's fault? I think it's more likely that “random guy” was just a victim of his own actions. 

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