In my previous post about Anton Rozenbaum's lawsuit , I noted that Nick of Twilight of the Idols had a different perspective on the situation. I thought that Nick's argument that perhaps the student was railroaded by the professor sounded reasonable; maybe I was too quick to assume that the student's lawsuit had no merit.
On the other hand, maybe I wasn't. I decided to check out Northwestern's rules of the rules for dealing with academic dishonesty. According to the procedures listed on this page, Professor Sontheimer could not have lowered the grade to an F by himself without due process, as is suggested in the original article, and in the lawsuit. The academic dean would have had to approve the grade change, and my guess is that the dean would have required sufficient evidence. If Sontheimer was smart enough to photocopy exams before handing them back, then the photocopy, plus Rozenbaum's copy with his "notes," could have been enough. This doesn't prove that Sontheimer's version of events is right, of course, but it does reduce the probability that he could have "railroaded" Rozenbaum into an F, as Nick suggested...
And given that Northwestern allows for expulsion with cheating, Rozenbaum should be lucky that he received only an F for the course (at least, that's the assumption I made, because the article doesn't mention expulsion. Neither does this one.) That F kept him from graduating on time, but not, presumably, from reenrolling and retaking the course.
Is it still likely, or even possible, that Professor Sontheimer punished Anton unfairly? Or did Rozenbaum, like some other highly-stressed overachiever I could mention, ultimately shoot himself in the foot by refusing to settle for something perfectly good that nonetheless wasn't up to his standards?
Posted by kswygert at October 22, 2003 06:47 PM