Grade
Appeals
To
understand my stories is useful to know that law faculties, like most others,
are assigned to committees. There are committees assigned to propose
candidates to be hired, committees to approve new courses, committees to review
candidates for tenure and promotion. Some committees make long range plans,
some study how to increase publications. The one I am on this year is called
Academic standards. We typically handle appeals from students when something
has been declined by an administrator. For example, a student can take a course
at another law school and transfer the credit as long as they got a C. Those
who get a D or lower, which takes more
effort than making a B, invariable appeal to Academic Standards to have the
grade transferred.
Today
the committee met and had two appeals I
had never encountered before. One was from a student who had just finished the
first year of school and had received and A in Contract Law. She complained
that the A grade, the highest you could get, was unfairly granted. Her story
was that in the class she had become friendly with the teacher Ed Freddy, who
we all refer to a Mr. Freddy. The friendliness led to lunch which led to dinner
(all without the knowledge of Mrs. Freddy) and well you can guess where this is
going.
They had falling out somewhere near the end of the semester and their fling was
over. Then the final exam came. In law
school in most courses the final exam determines the grade for the entire
semester. She took the exam and received her grade which, as I mentioned was an
A. Her petition to us was that she only got and A because of the “services” she
supplied to Mr. Freddy and that rather be treated like a prostitute she wanted
a grade no higher than a B. We tabled this case until our next meeting to give
a chance to evaluate her final exam ourselves.
Our
second appeal today was equally bizarre. First you have to understand that law
schools and other University department hire visitors who teach for a semester
or a year are not on the permanent
faculty. Last year we hired Mary McCan to teach for a
semester.
She was young, an average teacher, ambitious, frumpy-looking, and lonely in our small college town. According to the petition on the last night
of finals she when out with a few students including the petitioner and she
brought one of them home with her. They
were evidently quite drunk. According to the student, when he got ready to leave she
blocked the door. In his words he then “obliged her as a courtesy”. The student
got a B in the course and complained he did not deserve a B. In his words he did
not know if he had “he’d fucked himself up from a C or down from an A.” He said
that neither was acceptable and he wanted us to read his paper to determine if
he deserved either and A or a C, which he was willing to accept.