Saturday, May 01, 2021

Draft Excerpt for In the Company of Thieves: Grade Appeals to Law Professors

 



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.

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