Student Punished For Facebook Study Group Files $10 Million Lawsuit

from the going-overboard dept

Two years ago, we chronicled what seemed like a bizarre story of Ryerson student Chris Avenir, who was threatened with expulsion for daring to setup an online study group for his chemistry class on Facebook. The university accused him of cheating, when he noted that this was really no different than if a bunch of the students all got together to study. The whole thing seemed pretty ridiculous. Eventually, the school decided not to expel him, but still punished him by giving him a zero on one assignment and putting a "disciplinary note" in his file. This still seemed ridiculous. How dare he get students together to study the material! In fact, many schools now encourage those kinds of online study groups.

That said, it's difficult to support Avenir's latest move, which is to file a class action lawsuit against Ryerson, asking for $10 million because he wasn't allowed to have a lawyer present at his disciplinary hearing (found via Michael Scott):

A statement of claim filed on Mr. Avenir's behalf says that students enrolled at Ryerson have been denied the right to have a lawyer present at disciplinary hearings. According to the document, the university violated its policy requiring that all hearings comply with the Statutory Powers Procedure Act, which guarantees a right to legal counsel. The policy states that all its Senate hearings must "be conducted in a manner consistent with" the act.

This is just taking it too far. Yes, the disciplinary action was crazy, but a $10 million class action lawsuit? That seems like a response purely out of spite.

Filed Under: cheating, chris avenir, class action, students, study group
Companies: facebook, ryerson university