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Student sues university over grade
BOSTON (Reuters) - A student is suing a Massachusetts university over what he says is an unfair grade in a philosophy course, saying it could kill his chances of entering law school.
Brian Marquis, 50, said on Wednesday that he filed the lawsuit against the University of Massachusetts last week after receiving a "C" instead of the "A minus" he had expected.
"Quite frankly, I find this utterly unacceptable," Marquis, who worked as a legal assistant before returning to college, said from the university in Amherst in western Massachusetts.
The teaching assistant redrew the grading scale "to make grades more representative of student performance", which turned Marquis's 92.1 percent points into 84 percent, which became a C, according to an e-mail by the teaching assistant.
At the university, an 84 percent score can produce a grade between "A-" to a "C" depending on the professor's preferences, according to the school newspaper, the Daily Collegian.
School officials declined to comment on the case.
Sheldon Steinbach, a former chief attorney for the American Council on Education, representing over 1,800 colleges for over three decades, said such cases are rare and the handful of students who have sued over grades typically lost in court.
