[Xenalyte]

Back in the early '90s when I was teaching at the local university, I had a parent call me after the semester was over to try to get me to change her daughter's D to something higher.

I said that unfortunately, her daughter did D work at best, and my award of that grade was charitable.

Mama got very upset with me. When she finally took a breath from her rant, I mentioned that of the 10 assignments, her little girl didn't even turn in four, for which I should have failed her right there.

I pointed out that her little girl was always late to class - at least 15 minutes late for a 50-minute class - every time, and I had the records to prove it.

I offered to take Mama and her little girl to the college ombudsman or whoever it was that arbitrated these sorts of disputes, and Mama backed down pretty quickly.

I'm guessing her little girl didn't tell Mama about her subpar performance - just how unfair I was as a teacher - and that Mama figured she could intimidate me, the lowly teaching fellow.

And when Mama hung up on me, I knew exactly where her little girl got her non-work ethic.

[lepton]

That's the type of thing I think of when I hear of a lawsuit over grades - however in this case, there's no apparent questioning of the performance, just a dumb policy (and a kid who took the program undoubtedly knowing of the dumb policy).

[CommerceComet]

I once served on a University-wide Committee on Academic Probation. Students who had two consecutive semesters on academic probation were automatically denied admission to the university the next semester. This automatic denial could be overturned by professional advisors after a meeting with the student. If the student was denied admission by the advisor, he or she could appeal to our committee.

We heard the appeal of a young lady who by her own admission spent all her time in sorority activities and seldom studied. Her immaturity was evident. She gave us no plausible reason to overturn the decision of the professional advisor. Her appeal was denied.

The next day, I got a call from an official in the admissions office who had just spent a couple hours dealing with this girl's mother, an attorney. As it became more evident that her daughter's case was not going to overturned by this administrator, she started using that magic three-letter word that chills the blood of all college administrators. Our committee was asked to reconsider her case which would be presented by her mother this time. We were told that we were to apply our professional judgement but please, please don't get us sued.

We re-heard the appeal. Our committee informed the mother that every committee member felt that her daughter would much better off spending a semester or two at a community college and then reapply but that if she was sure that it was in her daughter's best interest, we would let her be re-admitted. We imposed 3-4 reasonable conditions on the daughter the violation any of which would preclude subsequent re-admission. The mother agreed to this. Need I tell how this turned out? The daughter achieved a 0.0 GPA the next semester.