Hi Ms. Rao,

I just recently learned about the present situation. I would like to address one statement in your email. You said that Rohan “overlooked his UNC Charlotte assignment.” Rohan accepted his status as an alternate to UNC Charlotte in early April. The acceptance of this status is done in writing.

Thanks!
Dr. Binns

On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 11:24 AM Padma Rao <shivpad@hotmail.com> wrote:
Dear Ms. Thibault,



Thank you for this email. We understand that Rohan will not receive acceptance to ECU, but we wanted to clarify some important points from our side because responsibility has been consistently placed on us for this issue. We are also aware of all the communications between Rohan and the program as his parents.



Rohan did contact some of the SVSM campuses because he overlooked his UNC Charlotte assignment and we had no idea about the policy. He did not ask for reassignment anywhere. When he said he is an alternate we asked him to contact the campuses to find out if there were any alternate opportunity for him in any of their campuses. He received a response from ECU addressing him as Rohan saying he did get accepted and they would be mailing out the required papers within a few days.



We waited for 10 days for the papers by mail. After that, we asked him to contact ECU once again for the papers. They mentioned that they have sent that to his NCSSM email.



We thought that NCSSM might have assigned an email address to all the selected participants, and since he is just an alternate we thought they might give him one after being accepted. That is the reason he stated that he does not have access to that email address. We did not know there was another student involved at all. They forwarded the email with all the documents to us which was previously sent to another email address.



Since he clearly got this offer, Rohan declined 2 of the other summer opportunities he got into.



After we saw the papers we noticed the name Ashwin Rao on one of the forms and contacted them once again with the name issue. They said they will take care of it and said they will see him in July (Please note the fact that we contacted them about the name issue many times).



Rohan sent out the papers and wanted to confirm the receipt of it. That is when they mentioned a “mixup” in the last names and he was not assigned to their campus. They could have done this before when they received the first email from Rohan.  We are pretty sure anyone can see the difference between Ashwin Rao and Rohan Rao just like Adam Smith and Robert Smith, and an assumption was made that a person with the last name “Rao” was the same person in the program. We understand that there were small mistakes on our part that furthered your confusion, but the core issue remains in the confusion of last names and the failure to recognize this leading to Rohan believing he was in the program.



When we called them about the issue they even incorrectly mentioned they have another Rohan Rao who sent out the same kind of email with exactly the same words inquiring about any opportunities available so they were confused about it? I am not sure if this is true, but it should not have affected this issue.



If you need any of our communications with ECU which will support the above mentioned we can forward that to you.

Thank you

Padma Rao (mom)



From: Melissa Thibault [rtmailto:thibault@ncssm.edu]
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2018 7:16 PM
To: rohanssrao@gmail.com; shivpad@hotmail.com
Cc: Shawn A. Moore; Miller, Cheryl Lewis; Kezios, Sue; Binns, Ian; Ms. Lori Tyler; Micca Pace; Emily Schmidt
Subject: Summer Ventures policy and Rohan Rao



Dear Rohan Rao and family,



I am Dr. Thibault, State Coordinator for Summer Ventures. I need to resolve an issue that has come to my attention.



Rohan Rao is an alternate for the 2018 Summer Ventures program at UNC Charlotte. In April, Rohan Rao other Summer Ventures campuses inappropriately, as he is not assigned to those campuses and Summer Ventures policy and FAQs clearly state that students cannot request to be reassigned to another campus. I have an email forwarded from UNC Wilmington in which he fails to identify his assigned campus, only stating that he is an alternate.



In the case of ECU, this email led to confusion due to the fact that another student with the same last name is assigned to ECU. It is unfortunate that Rohan Rao chose to tell Ms. Cheryl Miller at ECU that he did not have access to that email so she should change the email address on the account from that of the ECU participant to his own email address, but that does not change the fact that the other student is assigned to ECU and  ECU is not Rohan Rao's assigned campus.  Regardless of the confusion and misdirection, all the participant spots at ECU are taken by students who were informed that they were ECU finalists or alternates. Rohan Rao will not be attending Summer Ventures at ECU.



Placement for Summer Ventures is a complex process. Based upon capacity, course offerings and other factors, our campuses are assigned their participants and those are the only students authorized to attend that campus program. While occasionally in years past there has been high attrition among finalists which has resulted in sharing alternates with a different campus, this change is made by the State Coordinator's office. The fact remains that we at the State Coordinator's office have not reassigned Rohan Rao from UNC Charlotte to any other campus and he, along with other alternates who have been assigned at UNC Charlotte, will need to wait to see if a finalist spot opens up in a course at that campus that aligns with his stated interests. UNC Charlotte is the only Summer Ventures campus program Rohan Rao is eligible to attend.



Sincerely,

Melissa Thibault



--

Melissa Rihm Thibault, Ph.D.
Vice Chancellor

Distance Education and Extended Programs



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