I went to the University of Washington (UW) from 2003-2005, ended up with a good GPA, a major in history and even though I loved school and experienced great new things as a young adult, I found it really frustrating putting up with professors that sincerely didn’t like or didn’t care about us students. It seemed like some professors were just out to flunk as many students as they could or they wanted to spread their own opinions about the world unto their students and anyone who disagreed would be punished by lower grades.  Luckily, during my college years I didn’t run into a professor who ever flunked me for no good reason, but unfortunately for my sister that was not the case. 

My sister, like me did the Running Start program in high school.  A program that allows juniors and seniors in high school the opportunity to take community college classes.  My sister, Rebecca at sixteen enrolled in an English class at a local community college.  The class was small and during the whole quarter the professor hardly taught English.  Instead he spent most of the time talking about his multicultural views.  The homework was easy and on all Rebecca’s assignments she was scoring mostly A’s, with the occasional B’s.  Before the end of the quarter the professor handed out the professor evaluations to the students as soon as he got them.  Being an easy professor in grading the students gave the professor good marks, even though most felt the class was a complete waste.  Shortly after, the students handed in their final and the quarter ended.  Feeling pretty confident she had gotten a good grade, Rebecca was not worried about it.  Little did she know her grade for that class would come back as a 1.9 (D).  Shocked and upset, she couldn’t imagine her grade could have been that low.   Wanting answers, she went to the professor to ask him what happened.  He promptly told her he gave her a D on her final and that was why her grade was low.  But even with a D on the final, according to the syllabus on the grade structure, my sister felt his math was just not right and she felt she deserved a higher grade.  Not wanting to listen to her, the professor put her off and didn’t even want to listen.

Feeling even more agitated and upset, Rebecca didn’t want to take the class over after all the time and work she put into it.  She was one of the few students who was dedicated enough to sit through every one of his bad lectures and she turned in every one of her assignments.  Being only sixteen my parents were deeply involved with what was happening in her education.  They too questioned the logic in the final grade and with their full support they encouraged Rebecca to file a complaint and have a formal meeting with the Dean of that department.  My father being very knowledgeable about law and the way things worked had Rebecca file a student grievance.  This took about a month to process and during that time my sister tried to continue to communicate with the professor about this issue with no avail.  At the grievance meeting with the Dean of that department my father pointed out that Rebecca had turned her final exam into the help center where they said her paper was at least a B paper and that many other students were upset about their grades as well, as indicated from the e-mails they had sent to my sister.  At this the Dean said the school could not use any of this, but she would help in getting this matter sorted out. 

After the meeting and about six weeks after this originally started my father then filled out a Freedom of Information Act (see article Freedom Of Information Act ) FOIA, which allowed him access to the schools e-mails.  He was suspicious the school and the professor were not acting according to the ethic guidelines of the school, since Rebecca was getting nowhere with both the Dean and the professor.  They were either having Rebecca go around in circles or ignoring her.  With the e-mails in hand, my family got to see documented proof of the Dean talking to the professor encouraging him to avoid Rebecca’s follow up inquires on her grade.  In the e-mails they insulted her and even admitted part of the reason her grade was bad was because the professor simply didn’t agree with her topic.  My family even got to see all the e-mails sent to the professor from other students shocked about their final grade.

Still this was not enough evidence to change her grade, so my father knew then he was going to take it the next level and file another FOIA request asking that the professor hand over his grade book.  Since Rebecca had kept all the assignments handed back to her, the professor knew he had to change her grade.  In the end, he never showed the grade book, but instead he quickly sent out an e-mail saying, “opps, mathematical error” with no apology. 

Now, Rebecca is going to class at the UW Bothell campus and is on their honor role.  After this experience when she registers for classes she always checks out the professors at rate my professor .  It’s a site where students can rate a professor’s class and voice their opinions about them.  This way if she ever sees a professor with a bad rating she just avoids the class altogether.  Though, keep in mind schools are catching on to us avoiding certain professors.  My sister and I have witnessed schools changing the professor of the class at the last minute by having the professors change classrooms.  When this happens it causes a mad rush of students to the registration office to switch classrooms in hopes of still getting the better professor.  This I believe is wrong.  When you feel as a student your rights are being trampled, please, take charge.  You are paying good money for a decent education and I believe if everyone started to come down hard on bad professors and horrible school policies things will start to change. 

Review:

We have everything documented from assignments, e-mails, and syllabus.  The professor couldn’t sly his way out based on the rules and guidelines already layed out.  Make sure you keep every assignment and grade you are given in class.  Also, when filing a FOIA you need to recite direct RCW code (each state is different with law codes) and state exactly what you want (emails, grade book, etc.).  The RCW code for getting the e-mails and grade book for Washington State was 42.56.070.   Take charge in this battle and you too can win out a victory if you are diligent and persistent about taking your education to the top.  It took my sister a close to two and a half months to resolve this issue, but in the end it was worth it.  If you need help filling out a letter, please don’t hesitate to comment or check out the FOIA article  about requesting information and comment there too.  It’s a must read in conjunction with this article.  I am really interested to see if anybody else has had a similar issue or different problem with a professor or school.  We’d love to hear about it.