Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Lawsuit over bad grade


Lawsuit over Lehigh University student's bad grade to continue

Tom Shortell | The Express-Times By Tom Shortell | The Express-Times 
on February 13, 2013 at 6:10 PM, updated February 13, 2013 at 7:57 PM
Northampton County Judge Emil Giordano expressed uneasiness over potentially changing the grade of a Lehigh University graduate student suing over the mark.
But, he allowed the case to continue this afternoon over the requests of university lawyers.
"I remain unconvinced the judiciary should be injecting itself in the academic process," Giordano said.
Attorney Richard Orloski rested his case after a day and a half of calling witnesses to testify. Orloski argued his client Megan Thode unfairly received a C-plus in her therapy internship course because then-student-teacher Amanda Eckhardt disagreed with her views on gay marriage. When Thode appealed the grade, the department's faculty did not properly handle the appeals process, he argued, failing to provide her with a student advocate.
As a result, Thode earned not a master's degree in education in counseling psychology but a master's in education in human development. Thode is requesting the judge change the grade to a B so she can pursue her career goal of becoming a licensed therapist.
A licensed therapy degree would be worth $1.3 million in earnings over a lifetime, according to testimony at the non-jury trial.
Giordano said he could not find a single example of case law showing a court possessed the power to overrule an instructor. Orloski acknowledged he was not familiar with one either, but he argued the case amounted to a breach of contract, which would grant Giordano wide latitude in settling the matter as he saw fit.
Once Orloski rested, Lehigh attorney Michael Sacks asked Giordano to dismiss the case. In the hours of witness testimony and thousands of pages of evidence submitted into evidence, he argued Orloski failed to show there was a breach of conduct on behalf of the school or unfair punishment on the part of Eckhardt.

"There is no evidence this is anything other than an academic discussion with which Ms. Thode does not agree," Sacks said.
Giordano denied the request, ruling Orloski had met his burden of proof to continue with the case.
While the judge did not cite a specific example, one of the stronger pieces of evidence may be the apparently unprecedented nature of how Thode was awarded a C-plus. Eckhardt scored Thode's participation grade as a zero out of 25, bumping her from a B-plus. None of the professors who testified, including Stephen Thode, Megan Thode's father and a Lehigh University finance professor, could ever recall giving a student no points for participation.
Lehigh's legal team called two more professors from the school to the stand. Arpana Inman, program director for counseling psychology at Lehigh, said Eckhardt opted to appeal the grade rather than take steps to correct the problems Eckhardt had identified.
Arnold Spokane, a counseling professor, said Eckhardt, who taught under the name Amanda Carr at the time, reached out to him throughout the fall 2009 semester over her concerns with Megan Thode's unprofessional behavior.
Spokane said Thode tearfully came to his office for advice on how to handle the situation. When he suggested he meet with Eckhardt and discuss strategies on how she could improve, she became quiet, he recalled. He described the conversation as awkward and said he later learned Megan Thode responded to Eckhardt in a three-sentence letter defending herself, he testified.

The trial is slated to continue Thursday.

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