So I started my freshman year in a learning community (LC) for computer science. It’s super male-dominated, and there are only about five girls in the whole group. I joined hoping to meet people in my major and make connections—especially with other girls in the same boat.

The professor who runs the LC seemed cool at first, but lately there have been a bunch of red flags.

At the last event of the fall semester, some of us girls brought up how we felt kind of excluded. We found out that the guys (who all live on the same dorm floor) had a GroupMe having weekly dinners with the professor that none of us girls knew about. When we brought this up, the professor just said, “Well, you still get the emails, right?” Which, yes—we get the official emails. But we’ve been missing out on the weekly dinners because their RA is a CS major, while it’s just us 5 girls on the other floor with our regular RA. 

Then my friend submitted something for class in the wrong format and asked the professor if she could fix it. He said she could, but he’d take a point off, which she was fine with. To thank him, she baked him cookies and brought them to class. Instead of just saying thank you, he made this sarcastic comment like, “Well, that’s my job. That’s what I’m supposed to do.” Like… okay?? Was she just being nice? Why did he have to take it as a bribe?

Fast forward to the spring semester; there was one event I missed because I had class right before and a board meeting an hour after. I just wanted to grab food and chill for a second. Reasonable, right?

Around that same time, I put the professor down as a reference for a job I was applying to (not a letter of recommendation—just one of those forms with dropdown boxes). He emailed me later saying I should ask next time before putting him down, but he still filled it out and wished me luck. So I thought everything was cool.

Then one of my guy friends told me that the professor brought me up by name to the guys at the event I missed, saying something like “she asked me for a reference, and she’s not even showing up to events.” That made me super uncomfortable—like, why mention me to a group of students like that?

My friend also explained that the professor has a budget he needs to spend for the LC, and it wasn’t just me—a lot of people haven’t been showing up lately. So I get that attendance might be frustrating for him, but I still don’t think it’s okay to call out specific students behind their backs.

Then, LITERALLY the next day, he emailed me and asked if I could meet with an incoming freshman girl to talk about the LC. I appreciated the opportunity and figured, okay, maybe I was overthinking it, and everything was fine. The meeting went well, and I choose to go to the next LC, to event show I was trying to be more involved, especially after he asked me to do this favor for him. 

But today, I found out that the professor is only emailing people who have been going to events regularly. And none of the girls—including me—got the email. Like, we paid to be in this learning community too. And just because we missed a few events due to actual reasons (classes, clubs, responsibilities), we’re being cut out?

So now I feel really excluded and kind of punished for not being super involved 24/7—even though I have tried. I just think it’s unfair, especially when it feels like the guys in the LC are getting way more access and communication than we are.

Am I the AITA for being annoyed about this and not going to every LC event?