He sounds like a charming young man. The frightening part is that if he wins his case, he could be sitting in my freshman English class six days from now. I suspect that he will become “disillusioned with the college experience” rather quickly when he discovers that neither I, nor any other instructor for the required freshman courses, will pass a student who misses eighteen days of class – even if the student in question is trying to start a software company. If you’d rather work than go to school, fine, but don’t enroll in school. (Although I must point out that the working world tends to be less congenial to pompous twits than academia, especially if they never show up for work – which might explain why this kid only “tried” to start a software company.)
Oh, and I love the quote from his lawyer:
Screw the sarcastic quotes – no student is good enough if he doesn’t do his work, and someone who expects to be handed a BA on a silver platter on the strength of his SAT score has no business talking about arrogance. The sense of entitlement here is just staggering.
Grrr. I so hope that I don’t have to deal with this person, this semester or ever.
But you might want to reconsider this thread. If this (obviously litigious) kid gets into UNC, gets you as a professor, and gets a poor grade I wouldn’t be too surprised to see this come up and bite you.
Oh yeah? Oh yeah? Well, I’m gonna sue you for defamation of character in a class action suit involving all lawyers and the creators of this year’s SAT. We’ll be asking for $100 million billion quadrillion. But I’m willing to settle for a ham sandwich and a nice shoulder massage.
I’m not too worried, Zoff; the chances that he’ll see the thread are small, and I trust that if he is smart enough to figure out my identity, he will also be smart enough to drop the class. Besides, I grade fairly (well, sometimes generously) and document the reasoning behind the grades.
Anyway, I’m a grad student, not a prof, and I don’t have any money to be sued for
I am consistently amazed at the latest batch of kids who have decided that they reserve the sole power of deciding where they’ll attend college.
Back in my day, it was a four-way decision between:
a) The kid
b) The school
c) The parent(s) and
d) The available funding
This is just nuts. Let me ask you, though, Fretful Porpentine–as an instructor, do you think this sort of attitude has resulted from the fact that colleges now have more stringent requirements for admission?
I went off to college in 1988. I didn’t apply to any Ivy Leagues, but got into fairly good schools (Scripps, Trinity Univ., and Spelman) with less-than-perfect grades and no extracurriculars to speak of (I was in the marching band, on the prom committee, and helped build the French Club homecoming float every year, but that was it). I was a good essay writer, had good test scores, and am enough of a narcissist to actually enjoy interviews, which helped.
Nowadays, WOW–kids are developing frighteningly packed “college resumes”. I don’t think I’d stand a chance at getting into college these days! I didn’t even play a sport!
So I wonder–is it just that kids are SO FOCUSED on that (apparently) 100-page “checklist” of Stuff That Will Get You Into College that they lose sight of the fact that all this time they’re also supposed to be developing character and personality?
And unfortunately, when they get rejected from a school despite having completed The Checklist, they haven’t developed enough character and personality to realize that a lawsuit is just going to make them look assy.
I wish you the best of luck, Fretful, if you run into this guy.
Sounds like kiddo had an obligation too, and he didn’t live up to his part of the agreement. Too bad, so sad.
I work at UNC, too, and I fear that if he is allowed to attend it will compromise the integrity of the admissions process, and let kids think they can screw off all they like once that acceptance letter is in hand.
It’s just another case of people believing that the ends justify the means. His half-assed schoolery happened to culminate in a 1600 SAT score, so therefore, half-assed schoolery is the proper means of going through school.
Fuck that. I was a lazy piece-of-shit student, too, but I never demanded that a school give me so much as the time of day.
Wow, so there is at least another one of these spoiled young brats? Before I clicked on this I thought it was about the girl who sued her high school because they wanted her to share the valedictorian title with another student.
You know, as a student who was going into college with a damned fine transcript and test scores and ultimately chose (with a little help from the admissions departments at the ivy leagues) a local state school, I get really pissed when I see shit like this.
1600 on your SATs entitles you to something? Think again, dickhead.
Riiiight. Let me translate. You’re a smart kid who never really had to do much work. Your senior year, you decided that the work didn’t really matter so just didn’t do it. Now that you find you’re mistaken, you’re trying to weasel your way into a school that doesn’t want you. Good luck.
Here’s a link from the other paper in town, which has an excerpt of the letter from admissions telling this student what their expectations were for his acceptance to remain in force:
Senior year grade review is a part of admissions. Colleges don’t want kids to slack off and stop making an effort and blow off what they’re supposed to learn in their final year because they “already got in” somewhere.
U-M always does grade review, for every candidate, and it doesn’t matter how great the kid looked when he applied.
This suit might have made the papers, but I’ll bet it doesn’t get much further than that.
auntie em – Interesting question. As it happens, the “checklist phenomenon” is one of the issues I’ve been planning to discuss in the first two weeks of my freshman class – not with reference to this particular student, of course. In fact, the essay I plan to use as a springboard for class discussion dates from my own college-application days ten years ago. I’m not sure things have changed all that much; I get the sense that it’s always been a small but obnoxious minority of students from exceptionally privileged backgrounds who get caught up in the Quest for the Perfect Application, while us mere mortals are content to muddle along with our many imperfections and often get into decent colleges anyway. The ten students from the entering class with whom I had the pleasure of working this summer certainly seemed normal enough. (Well, except for the young woman who decided to do a spontaneous ten-minute oral report on the dangers of the Illuminati, but at least she was not-normal in a characterful way )
As far as I can see, the SATs are irrelevant. He’s suing to get a contract enforced. The contract was the university’s letter of acceptance, which he agreed to.
The letter said
There are two ambiguities that I can see.
What’s a “successful” graduation?
Does the phrase, “We expect” mean that these things are required for the contract to be enforcible?
IMHO the student has pretty good grounds on point #2. The letter just isn’t clear. Saying that it expects something is different from saying that it’s a requirement. This is a contract of adhesion, meaning that that the wording was written by the stronger party and imposed on the weaker party. Therefore, by law, ambiguities must be resolved in favor of the party who didn’t write the contract.
On point #1, I think the student will lose. Getting a combination of C’s, D’s, and F’s isn’t “successful” completion. In fact, I would argue that that the sentence, “We expect you to continue to achieve at the level that enabled us to provide this offer of admission…” defines what the University meant by “successful graduation.”
However, I think the student has real chance to prevail because it’s a contract of adhesion. Clearly, the University could have written a form letter that was more clear.
Eh, just another whinefest in a series of whinefests from people who think that they’re owed something but forget that they also owe something. If good SATs were all that’s required to get into the school of ones choice, then why would we have compulsory schooling at all? Point is, he knew that he had to maintain his GPA, he didn’t do it, & now he’s trying to weasel out of it. In this litigious society, I’m not shocked.
I’m also irritated that his parents apparently didn’t say to him, “Now [name], you didn’t hold up your end of the bargain, didja? Go to another school for a year, regain your GPA and reapply to this one then”. The kid should know this, being 18 years old, but I can’t help but be irritated at the idea that his folks think that litigation is the proper course of action.
Meh. I’m slightly on the kid’s side. At least enough so that I’d give him a hearing before deciding that he’s a spoiler brat. Sure, he screwed up big time in his senior year, but still pulled off a 3.5 GPA. Add in the SAT score and the starting a company thing, and a claim of some health problems and I’m not sure I’m developing the picture of a total loser here.
Couldn’t they just put him on double-secret probation for his first semester rather than pulling the rug out from under him?
If you’re smart enough to be scoring 1600 on your SAT’s, then you’ve got to really go out of your way to let your grades slide that much. You pretty much have to stop showing up for tests or turning in assignments.
I would actually say, if he’s not getting financial aid that would otherwise go to a student who cares to learn, let him in probationally and then kick him out at the end of the term after he blows off all his classes and gets D’s.
