What Did I Do Wrong?

A perplexed professional stands in a courtroom, sporting a red clown nose, as he clutches documents. Behind him, a board filled with interconnected questions and the phrase "What did I do?" hints at a complex dilemma.

What did I do wrong?

I was expelled from university before I ever fully understood what I had done.

Seven months passed in silence before they even gave me a hearing. Seven months of anxiety, precarity, and shame. And when I finally sat before them—armed with arguments, citations, lived experience, and a demand for coherence—I was told I was guilty of non-academic misconduct. Just like that. No explanation that actually explained anything. No line-by-line response to the evidence I brought. No engagement with the academic theories I cited. Just: “You’re guilty.”

But here's the thing: I'm not upset because I didn't get my way. I'm upset because their conclusion doesn’t follow. There is no how. There is no “show your work.” They simply decided—and then expected me to move on, as if I’d been told something true.

But I wasn’t told anything. I was handed a sentence without a cause. Left to reverse-engineer their assumptions from the rubble of my life. And when I reached out to the hearing officer to ask—to plead—for clarification, I was told the conversation was over.

That silence is not procedural. It is epistemic abandonment.

In a letter I wrote after the decision, I put it plainly:

“I am not a lawyer. I'm just a dumb prostitute. So please excuse my ignorance. I do not see the connection between your letter being the record of your decision and your refusal to meet with me… I was asking you to please provide me access to your justificatory processes.”

That wasn’t sarcasm. That was desperation.

I wasn’t demanding sympathy. I was demanding coherence. Because without that, I'm left with something worse than guilt—I'm left in not-knowing. And there is no justice without knowing.

The Right to Understand

Understanding is not optional. It’s not a nicety you give someone out of kindness. It is the absolute baseline of justice. Without it, there can be no accountability, no repair, no meaning—just punishment and silence.

I was punished without explanation. I was found guilty without being told, clearly and specifically, what I did. I asked—over and over—for that explanation. I made arguments. I cited evidence. I laid out reasoning. I showed that I was thinking carefully, responsibly, in good faith. And what I got back—every single time—was deflection, vagueness, evasion.

This didn’t just frustrate me—it destroyed me.

When you are told you’ve done something so wrong it warrants expulsion from your education, your community, your future, but you are not told what that thing was, you begin to unravel. You go looking for the crime inside yourself. You turn every word you ever said into potential evidence. You second-guess your memories. You question your sanity. You wonder if you're dangerous and just don’t know it. That’s not justice. That’s psychological torture.

It pushed me to the edge. Not knowing didn’t just affect my understanding of the event—it infected my understanding of myself. I was stuck in a loop of self-interrogation with no answer. I tried to keep living—through poverty, through isolation, through mental illness—but the silence followed me. I was expelled, and then I was left suspended in ambiguity, unable to move forward, unable to heal.

They had power over my life, and they used it to judge me—but not to speak to me. Not to help me make sense of it. Not to help me grow or change. Just: “You are guilty,” full stop.

But justice isn’t just about delivering outcomes. It’s about earning them through process, logic, and care. It’s about treating the other person as a human being with the right to ask: Why?

When that question goes unanswered, you don’t just lose the process—you lose yourself inside it.

The Ethical Basis of Explanation

Justice isn’t just about decisions. It’s about how those decisions are made—and whether the person being judged had the capacity to understand, deliberate, and respond.

The moment you tell someone they’ve done something wrong, you’re not just issuing a verdict—you’re inviting a process of moral reflection. But if you don’t explain what they did wrong, or why it was wrong, you’ve denied them that process. You’ve demanded accountability without providing the knowledge needed to be accountable.

And that, as far back as Aristotle, is the breaking point of justice.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says clearly: an action cannot be fully voluntary unless it is done knowingly and deliberately. If someone acts in ignorance—especially if they are never given the chance to understand—then you cannot meaningfully blame them. To be guilty of wrongdoing, you must have been capable of knowing it was wrong, and capable of seeing how your actions connected to that harm.

But I was never given that chance.

I was punished without explanation. I asked what I did. I asked why it was considered harassment. I asked how my conduct met the university’s own stated criteria. I asked how I could possibly have done better if I was never told what standard I was violating. And each time, I was met with silence, or vagueness, or cold procedural closure.

No explanation means no deliberation. No deliberation means no choice. And no choice means no real moral agency.

Aristotle also says that we become virtuous not through abstract lectures, but through habituation—through practice, correction, reflection, and course-correction over time. But that only works if you’re given feedback that makes sense. If the system tells you, “You’re guilty,” but can’t explain why, then it’s not trying to help you grow. It’s just declaring you defective.

Without explanation, there is no path forward. There is only exile.

And maybe most damning of all: for Aristotle, the entire point of ethics is to help us move toward eudaimonia—a full, flourishing life. That requires knowledge, self-reflection, and a world that makes sense. But I was left in confusion, forced to live in the aftermath of a decision I didn’t—and still don’t—understand. You cannot flourish under unexplained judgment. You can only wither in uncertainty.

So when institutions like mine claim to act in the name of justice while refusing to explain how or why, they’re not practicing justice at all. They’re practicing a kind of ethical erasure—one that punishes people while stripping away the very things that would let them act, grow, or repair.

If you can’t explain the wrong, then don’t speak of guilt.If you can’t show the reasoning, don’t speak of justice.

System Justification and the Fear of Explanation

What is the purpose of punishment, if not to help someone understand what they ought not to do again?

That’s supposed to be the whole point. Whether it’s retribution, deterrence, or rehabilitation, punishment only makes sense if the person being punished is told: Here is what you did. Here is why it was wrong. Here is how to do better. But I never got that. I was punished, and to this day, I still don’t know what the “wrong” was.

So what exactly was I meant to learn?

What decision was I supposed to not repeat?

If no one can—or will—answer that, then the punishment wasn’t about justice. It was about preserving an image. It was about system justification—a process by which institutions protect themselves from having to admit they acted without reason.

This is the real reason they refused to explain their decision. Not because they were too busy. Not because I was too aggressive. But because to explain would have exposed the contradictions that underpinned the entire process.

Explanation would have forced them to reconcile my reasoning with theirs—and they couldn’t. Because my reasoning was sound. My questions were coherent. My critiques were supported by theory and grounded in experience. To engage with me honestly would have meant confronting the fact that their conclusion didn’t follow from the evidence. That the process wasn’t fair. That the outcome wasn’t just.

Institutions don’t fear conflict. They fear coherence. Because coherence demands accountability.

So instead of answering me, they recast my pursuit of understanding as a threat.

They said I was being difficult. That I was overstepping. That I was creating a hostile environment by pressing for clarity. They pathologized my questions. They redefined my insistence on meaning as misconduct.

This is what philosopher Paul Giladi calls discursive abuse: when institutions weaponize their control over language and process to strip a person of their standing as a reasoning agent. When you speak clearly and are treated as disruptive. When you ask to be heard and are told you're harassing. When your insistence on logic is framed as instability.

It’s not just that they ignored my voice. It’s that they made my voice illegible.

System-justifying beliefs are what let people say, “Well, if you were punished, you must have done something.” It’s what lets decision-makers sleep at night. It’s what lets onlookers shrug. It’s what turns injustice into a non-event.

But I won’t play along.

If the system can’t say what I did wrong, if it can’t show me what I’m supposed to have learned, if it can’t face its own incoherence, then I will. I will say it clearly:

You refused to explain—because explanation would have revealed the truth: That this wasn’t about justice.It was about control.

5. What the Documents Actually Show

It’s one thing to say I was denied the right to understand. It’s another to show it. So let’s look at the record.

Over and over, in formal hearings, in letters, in direct appeals, I asked the same basic questions:

• What specifically am I being accused of?

• What evidence supports this accusation?

• How does my conduct meet the university’s definition of harassment?

• What exactly could I have done differently?

• 
  

These aren’t rhetorical flourishes. They’re the bare minimum someone must know in order to take responsibility for their actions.

But at every stage, my questions were met with vagueness, avoidance, or outright refusal. The documents show this clearly.

In the April 2023 decision letter:

The hearing officer acknowledges that I presented a structured argument, including:

• A philosophical case for why my behavior did not meet the standard for harassment

• A critical epistemological analysis of how feedback had failed me

• Evidence from my personal history and psychiatric struggles

• 
  

She then concludes, simply, that I am guilty of non-academic misconduct—without addressing or rebutting a single one of those points.

There is no explanation for why my behavior qualifies as harassment. No reference to the definitions in the policy. No logical bridge between my conduct and the outcome. Just the outcome itself, declared.

In my April 30 letter to the hearing officer:

I pleaded for clarity—not as a legal strategy, but as a human being trying to understand. I wrote:

"I do not see the connection between your letter being the record of your decision and your refusal to meet with me to explain your reasoning... I was not asking you to change your decision—I was asking you to explain how you got there."

This is not defiance. It is a desperate appeal for coherence. And still, the university responded by stating that communication was closed.

In the university's internal correspondence and responses:

Across the appeal process, the same pattern emerges:

• My critiques are summarized, then dismissed.

• My reasoning is acknowledged, then ignored.

• My mental health is referenced, but never engaged with in relation to the decision itself.

At no point do they show their work.

At no point do they say: Here is the moment where your actions crossed the line. Here is the harm. Here is why your argument didn’t hold.

Instead, they treat my demand for explanation as if it were already answered—when the record shows, plainly, that it never was.

And the documents reveal something else, too:'

A total collapse of process.

I was denied access to communication with decision-makers.I was denied the opportunity to meaningfully appeal.I was told the case was closed, without ever being shown how it was opened.

This isn’t an isolated failure—it’s a system functioning exactly as designed: to appear procedurally just while maintaining total epistemic control.

The documents don’t just support my claim. They prove it.That I was judged without explanation.That my questions were treated as threats.That the process was never built for understanding.Only for conclusion.

The Aftermath

I didn’t just lose a hearing. I lost my life as I knew it.

Because when you're expelled without explanation, you're not just being removed from a university—you’re being thrown out of a system that gave your life structure, direction, and possibility. It’s not just academic. It’s existential.

And when that removal is wrapped in silence—when no one will tell you what exactly you did, or why it was so wrong, or what standard you violated—you don’t walk away with answers. You walk away with a question you can never stop asking:

What did I do to deserve this?

And when no answer comes, that question turns inward. It turns toxic. It festers. It infects everything.

I spiraled. I was already struggling with mental illness when the expulsion happened—but what followed made it worse. I lost housing. I lost financial support. I lost access to medical resources. I ended up in poverty so deep that even survival became uncertain. Every day became a fight not just to stay alive, but to stay tethered to any sense of who I was before this happened.

Worse still—I wasn’t even allowed to grieve. Because everyone around me had a convenient answer: You must have done something.And if I said I didn’t know what it was? That I was never told? That I made a case and no one responded?

They’d shrug.Or they’d say: You must have deserved it anyway.

That’s the quiet cruelty of institutional injustice—it leaves you with a mark and no narrative. A sentence with no explanation. A stigma you’re expected to carry, but not to question.

I’m not just living with poverty. I’m living with uncertainty that corrodes everything. I’m living with the suspicion that maybe I am dangerous, or broken, or wrong in ways I still can’t see—because the people who made that judgment refused to say why.

This isn’t justice. This is psychological exile—a life sentence of not knowing.

And that is its own kind of violence.

This Is Not Justice

Justice isn’t just about procedures and policies. It’s not a matter of checking boxes or issuing outcomes. Justice requires coherence. Justice requires explanation. Justice requires the recognition of the person being judged as a moral agent—someone capable of reason, reflection, and change.

I was denied all of that.

They punished me without telling me why. They expelled me without showing how. They treated my search for understanding as an act of aggression. They called my questions a threat. And in doing so, they made clear that this process was never designed to include me as an equal participant. Only as a target.

You can’t tell someone they’ve done wrong and then refuse to say what the wrong was.You can’t demand moral accountability while denying the information required to make sense of the accusation.You can’t call it justice when it leaves a person broken, confused, and silenced.

To this day, I still don’t know what I did.

And that is what makes this a failure of justice—not just for me, but for any system that claims to uphold fairness while abandoning explanation.

So I’m saying it now, because they wouldn’t: If you cannot explain the harm, then you have no right to condemn.

If you cannot engage with reason, then you have no right to claim judgment.

If you cannot answer the question “What did I do?”—then you do not get to say I deserved

what followed.

This wasn’t a mistake. It was a refusal.

A refusal to respond. A refusal to explain. A refusal to treat me as someone worthy of understanding.

That is not justice. That is a system protecting itself at the cost of the person it was supposed to serve.

And I know I cannot undo it. I am just one person. The narrative they built around me—of danger, of misconduct, of expulsion—has already taken root. It has more weight than anything I can say.

I will resist it when I can. I will speak when I am able. But I know it will likely be in futility.

What I am left with is the knowledge that I now have to live under a label I did not earn. A label that has already taken so much from me—my education, my stability, my dignity, my future.

I don’t yet know how to live with that.

Because when others are allowed to determine your narrative without your consent, it stops being your life. You become a plot point in someone else’s story of order restored. Of crisis averted. Of triumph.

I’ve been reduced to an event. A disruption. A danger. A problem to be removed.

I have become an object in a story I didn’t write.

And I don’t know how to live like an object. Thick Thought Thumper -'What did do?'

Campus police apprehend a confused and scantily clad man reading on a university bench, as a scholarly crow observes nearby.

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Thank You to My Reader(s?)

I want to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude to the one person who will actually find this and read it. You are the best.

Have you ever been mischaracterized or accused falsey of something? Let me know in the comment section.