Blacklisted by Oxford because of unpaid debt/fell out with tutor?

[River]

The background is that I was a good undergraduate student. I graduated from university with a top degree classification and several of the Faculty exam prizes and scholarships. The trouble started when I began a Masters degree at the same university. The course didn't suit my interests and I fell out with my main tutor, who took my bad performance very personally. I know that she contacted all three of my former referees and made sure to involve them. For full disclosure I also left the Masters course with unpaid rent owed to my college and threatened to draw publicity to the case if they pursued debt collection action against me (I had no money to pay the amount they were demanding so this was a last resort). A few years later I want to go back to university (for public policy/development) but none of my tutors seem willing to provide references. One has refused and the other seems very cold about it (as he was my personal tutor I think he is obliged to provide a reference, so I don't want to push him into providing a bad one). I am applying for this round so I don't have time to take a new course to get a reference. Is it better to risk a recommendation from someone who might be willing to sink all my applications, or choose someone who hardly (doesn't at all) remember me?

[fuzzylogician]

You shouldn't force anyone to write you a letter. Even if it's technically part of their job description, you can't dictate the content, so telling them they have to do it could very easily lead to a bad outcome. I would personally not ask anyone for a reference who I don't think would write a strong and supportive letter. I doubt that a weak letter from someone who hardly remembers you will be all that helpful, but I don't think that pushing someone to write a letter who doesn't want to makes any sense whatsoever. If you don't have access to supportive letter writers at this time, you might need to slow down and build up your network so you can later apply for the degree you want. 

[historicallinguist]

2 hours ago, River said:

Thanks. Do you think that most academics would write a bad letter based on a colleague's judgement of a student who always performed well in their own classes? In the past this tutor has always been very supportive.

Hi. I went to the same institution, and was in the pretty similar situation as yours. Here is my 0.02$. Unfortunately, many tutors in Oxford care more about their faces than the welfare of their former students. So, what is happening is that, after they wrote your letters for the first time, and you did not do well when their colleague serves as your tutor (for no fault on your part, as I know some of the Oxford courses really suck, especially some the 12 months or 9 months master courses), they feel that they lose faces in front of their colleagues, and there is 0 chance to get letters from these people, even if you have legitimate reasons for dropping out or for not doing well. 

One way you can get out of the dilemma is to apply to some place where references are not needed and try to get good references from this place and and then transfer to a better place that requires 3 references. One place that does not need reference is Australia universities, among which Monash University is notable. Hope this helps.

[River]

2 hours ago, fuzzylogician said:

You shouldn't force anyone to write you a letter. Even if it's technically part of their job description, you can't dictate the content, so telling them they have to do it could very easily lead to a bad outcome. I would personally not ask anyone for a reference who I don't think would write a strong and supportive letter. I doubt that a weak letter from someone who hardly remembers you will be all that helpful, but I don't think that pushing someone to write a letter who doesn't want to makes any sense whatsoever. If you don't have access to supportive letter writers at this time, you might need to slow down and build up your network so you can later apply for the degree you want. 

Thanks. Do you think that most academics would write a bad letter based on a colleague's judgement of a student who always performed well in their own classes? In the past this tutor has always been very supportive.

[fuzzylogician]

2 hours ago, River said:

Thanks. Do you think that most academics would write a bad letter based on a colleague's judgement of a student who always performed well in their own classes? In the past this tutor has always been very supportive.

Generally speaking, people write letters based on their own experience with a student. They may take into account colleagues' opinions, but eventually if they write and sign a letter, it indicates that it expresses their opinion, not that of anyone else.