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Don't bother to sue your college if one of your professors cancels a final exam, court rules
By adamg on Wed, 03/23/2016 - 7:44am
The Massachusetts Appeals Court has dismissed a lawsuit by a student in a Boston University master's program who was angry that his professor deprived him of the chance to take the final exam listed in the course syllabus.
Sony Vilbon said the syllabus was equivalent to a contract and that the professor's decision not to give the final exam was a breach of contract - and a violation of the Massachusetts consumer-protection law.
Although most students might be overjoyed at not having to take a final exam, Vilbon said he needed high mark he felt he could get on the exam to raise his course grade high enough to let him graduate the program - he had a 2.92 GPA and the program in which he was enrolled required a 3.0. The syllabus said the final exam would count for 15% of the course's grade; without it, he got a B.
But the appeals court agreed with a Superior Court judge that no, a syllabus is not a contract or "enforceable promise, " nor was the professor's decision to cancel the test "unfair or deceptive" under the state consumer-protection law. More important, the court continued:
[T]he plaintiff's assertion that, had he taken a final exam in the class, he ultimately would have received a high enough course grade to allow him to meet the grade point average required for graduation, is no more than conjecture. As all of the plaintiff's claims are dependent upon this unfounded assumption, the complaint was properly dismissed for failure "to raise a right to relief above the speculative level."
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| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Complete ruling, Sony Vilbon vs. Boston University | 60.7 KB |
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Comments
This makes the Shaw's cheese lawsuit guy
seem rational.
So many people don't
So many people don't understand the difference between "unfair" and "criminally unfair."
I mean, it totally sucks to be that guy. Just one decent exam score from completing a very expensive degree and they're like "nope, we're calling the game and you lose."
He probably should have done
He probably should have done slightly better on the other 85% of his grade. I do not feel the least bit bad for him.
Not taking a curve or
Not taking a curve or anything into account, but:
B ~= 85%, right?
So he had about 72.25 out of 85 before the final. Assuming a B+ (about 88%) would have been enough to get his GPA up, he'd have needed to get at least thisclose to 100% on the final in order to get a B+. An A- (call it 91%), would have been basically impossible.
You've got to earn your degree
They guy wasn't doing well in his classes, hence the low grades.
Maybe next time he'll study harder instead of suing the professor.
additives
Not that anyone would ever think suing someone for labeling their product 100% cheese when it includes additives like cellulose would ever be considered irrational.
Ha.
Poor Sony. Perhaps he should of worked on upping his GPA before the final exam?
Did Sony sign something that
Did Sony sign something that stated the syllabus was not going to change and was indeed a contract? Nice try Sony!
BU Metropolitan College
FWIW from the BU Metropolitan college website syllabus checklist for instructors:
"This is your contract and your students’ contract for grades and will be used as such if there are any issues".
http://www.bu.edu/met/files/2011/02/bu-met-college-syllabus-checklist.pdf
I assume the Masters program has a more stringent framework than what the Metropolitan college is laying down in the PDF, but I can see where one would get the idea of at least trying to push the issue. I agree with the ruling completely, yet I do not see the lawsuit as frivolous or an attempt to play victim. Running this sort of thing up the flagpole to see who salutes is a self-respecting move, in my opinion, and I would hold my mighty online judgement of the character who brought such a suit until their reaction to the ruling was revealed.
Yes.
However, the word "contract" can be used as an agreement enforceable by law as well as just an agreement between two parties. It is a stretch, in any case, to think that a change, by your professor (who may of told the class, beforehand, that the syllabus is subject to change - we do not know), in his/her syllabus can be challenged in a court of law under the Consumer Protection Act! But Sony gave it the good, old college try.
This little "Dilton Doiley"
This little "Dilton Doiley" probably reminds teachers when they forget to assign homework.
Maybe not illegal
But it was highly immoral and unethical to cancel an exam after telling students that is it worth a certain percentage of a final grade. The instructor set certain expectations and should take that into account when making important decisions.
Indeed. I concur that this
Indeed. I concur that this doesn't rise to the level of a criminal consumer-protection claim, but the student definitely has a grievance. But it's probably something that would need to be dealt with internally in the university - filing a grievance against the professor with the college administrators - not through a lawsuit in the public courts.
This wasn't a criminal case.
This wasn't a criminal case. It's a civil case. Very different.
A big question is why did the professor cancel the final. I once had a prof who announced at the start of semester that final grades would be based 40% exams, 40% papers, and 20% class participation. At the end of the semester he realized that students majoring in his liberal arts department didn't test while, while the students majoring in the sciences tested much better, so he changed the formula to bump up the grades for his favored group.
It's possible that the plaintiff is a person who has always tested well. Perhaps he failed to show enough evidence of that in his complaint, which is why the court said it was conjecture that it would have helped his grade.
Where in you in the class?
He could have announced the in 2nd week that the final would be canceled and replaced by another paper, etc.
It's not unreasonable to think a professor would want to change the structure of the class once it starts and unless there students were only told of the change at the last minute there is little to complain about.
Normally the syllabus is only distributed once the class has started so it's not as if this guy enrolled in the class expecting to squeak a B+ by acing the final. (Which would be subjectively graded anyway.)
Agreed
We need a lot more information to make informed comments.
Tough luck
While I do feel bad for Sony, in this case it's really not something you can sue over. Shit happens in life that isn't fair and sometimes you just have to accept that and move on.
BU should have administrative
BU should have administrative offices and procedures in place to help the student negotiate a fair resolution, which in this case really should have involved pressuring the instructor to honor the terms of the syllabus which, yes, is a type of contract. Not a legal one, but still one that the university has some obligation to ensure is followed. Simply finishing off the semester by emailing the students their grades and not even informing them that the final was off (as described in the ruling) was way out of line. Was there a pedagogical reason for this, or did the professor just want to head out for vacation early? I'd like to know how involved the BU administration was before this ended up going to court.
The part that annoys me the
The part that annoys me the most is how the court dismisses his claim because he can't prove if he'd do well on the exam or not. Of course he doesn't, because he didn't get to take it, because the professor changed the rules mid-stream.
It should be the burden of the person changing the deal after the fact to prove that the other person wasn't harmed by the change.
If the court had ordered the prof to give the exam, there's always the chance that this guy would do badly and it would pull down his GPA further. That's a risk he's taking by bringing the suit.
Question
Is the 3.0 GPA requirement to graduate from the program, or to just stay in the program? If the latter, that could explain the motivation behind the lawsuit.
Although I agree with others (and the court) that this guy should have not relied on the final exam to boost his otherwise bad grades.
I would be curious as to why
I would be curious as to why the Professor just canceled the exam. It seems very odd that a Professor would make such a move and even though I agree that the court should not be making the decisions the school Trustees should be looking into it. Did the Professor just not feel like dealing with the creation and scoring of the test? Was the Professor protecting other students who may have dropped if they took the exam? When was the change announced? There are lots of questions around this and it sounds a little shady.
Yes the student should have done better all along but the entire point of a syllabus is to let a student plan for the semester. "Ok I did bad on this paper, but I am going to double down on the exam." I also presume that these course outlines get approved by the Chair of the Department in advance, did the Chair know there was a change? Either these exams matter or they do not and the Professor really should know that in advance. It's not like they changed the number of weekly assignments because of a Blizzard (Which I had happen in college, there were 25 of those but we only did 24 because of classes we missed.) I have seen small changes but never big ones. I even had a professor once who dropped a paper that was 20 percent of the grade as a requirement as an option. It was in place of the final and he gave us our grades up to that point and gave us an option. Those who did the paper got the chance to boost their grade even more and those who did not want to risk lowering their score could not do the paper and take a small penalty on their final grade but for the most part kept what the grade was at that point (So if you had an A it would become an A- if you did not do the paper.) He was a social sciences professor and I heard that was a regular thing for him, I think we were part of a study haha. BUT it was an option.