An Ohio State chemistry teaching assistant told the students in her lab last month that she didn’t want to be there, was going to give them good grades and that they could cheat on their assignments.

Beginning in early February, in week five of the quarter, students in a lab section of chemistry 122 were introduced to their new TA, Melissa Stredney. The previous assistant had gotten ill.

Professor Rosemary Bartoszek-Loza, lecturer for the class, and professor Robert Tatz, director of the course, introduced Stredney.

Loza said she had worked with Stredney before and had a lot of faith in her to run the students’ lab section, according to people familiar with the situation who asked to remain anonymous.

It was shortly after Melissa “Missie” Stredney’s first lab section that her unusual behavior began.

She told them during the first lab that she hated being there, sources said.

She told the class that “what they wrote on the lab write-ups was irrelevant, and that they could write funny stories at the end of the lab reports and it would not matter,” a source said.

The following week, on Feb. 10, Stredney entered the lab and told the students, who had already set up the lab, that she wanted to go home because she was sick.

Before leaving lab, Stredney told the class exactly what to write on their lab reports and said it was unnecessary to turn in any graphs for the data.

After the students left the lab early that day, they received an e-mail from Tatz, who was concerned because he came around to check on each lab section and the class was nowhere to be found.

Stredney promptly sent out an e-mail to the class after getting word of Tatz’s concern and instructed the students “PLEASE DO NOT WRITE HIM BACK.” She said in the e-mail “he came around one-ish and I told him you guys got most of your work done, but I got sick and had to go home and that I took full responsibility for this week’s lab reports blah blah blah.”

The e-mail continued, “Don’t worry. He thinks I’m going through some issues with chemo right now, and I just have the stomach flu.” She said that Tatz liked her and “that everything will be OK.”

That first e-mail ended with a smiley-face and a “Have fun doing nothing for lab 17!”

On Feb. 12, she was fired.

Stredney soon sent the class an e-mail saying that Tatz had found that she told the students to fabricate numbers for the lab.

Stredney wrote: “Tatz gave me two options … one was to file 25 cases of academic misconduct (one for each student) … two was to get fired and the students wouldn’t suffer any repercussions. … I chose to get fired.”

However, in another e-mail sent just 30 minutes later she says “You know, f— it.”

Stredney said “The more I think about [getting fired] the more pissed off I get. … I may go get drunk this evening and go into Carmen and see if I can f— with your midterm exam grades.”

The “crazy” e-mails continued, sources said. The next e-mail Stredney sent was meant to address the students for tattling on her.

“I don’t like to be ratted out about ‘cheating’ and getting fired by a couple 18-year-olds whom I was trying to make their life as easy as possible by giving them REALLY good grades on their labs when they REALLY shouldn’t be getting them,” Stredney wrote.

The students received one final e-mail on Feb. 15, threatening them that she would rather “take them down with her” because she was afraid of getting kicked out of the College of Pharmacy because of the situation.

Stredney wrote to the students about “knowing the code, knowing when to keep your f—ing mouth shut.”

On Feb. 17, Tatz, Loza and a police officer met with the class. The professors told them that they would be completing all their labs as originally planned and they were not to blame for anything.

The officer told the students to contact him immediately if Stredney contacted them again.

When contacted for this story, Chemistry 122 students refused to comment because they had been advised by Chemistry Department professors to not talk about it.

Stredney has not contacted them since.

The Lantern requested records related to Stredney’s employment at OSU but the university refused to provide them, citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

The Lantern attempted to contact Stredney but received no response. Tatz and Loza were contacted but refused to comment for this story.

Gina Ferrentino can be reached at [email protected].