Law Schools, Screw-Ups

Law School Leaks Grades, Offers Solution, Takes It Back

Students were embarrassed, so now we've got a whole thing.

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Dont PanicIt’s been a while since we’ve had a good old exam or grading catastrophe. But this one has all the elements of a giant screw-up.

Tipsters report that students in a Criminal Procedure class at Pepperdine Law had their grades leaked to the entire class. Some people did well, some people did poorly, and now everybody knows.

If this had happened in 1986, it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal. I’m sure that 30 years ago, shaming people into learning law was totally acceptable. But you can’t just run around embarrassing the current crop of law students without having a scandal on your hands. Dean Deanell Reece Tacha issued a heartfelt apology to the students:

Pepperdine mea culpa 1

But there’s more to this mea culpa than apologizing for a de-minimis mistake. After the grades were leaked, Pepperdine came up with a plan to allow “affected” students to retroactively take the class “pass/fail” and have those grades entered into their record.

Why was this ever a plan? Let’s say you are Diana Pepper and everybody knows that you got a “C” in CrimPro. How does it help you to change the grade to “Pass”? Everybody still knows that you got a damn “C,” the only people you are fooling are employers.

But if you let some kids retroactively take the class pass/fail, you are screwing up the class rankings for everybody. Just because everybody knows that you got a “C” doesn’t change the objective fact that you got a damn “C.” It sucks, but you’ve got to deal with it.

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Some kids, obviously, applied for the retroactive change. BUT THEN the school realized how stupid that was and took it back. Dean Tacha’s message goes on to explain that she is instructing the registrar to reinstate the letter grades earned by the students. To recap the timeline here:

* Grades earned
* Grades leaked
* Hand-wringing commences
* Grades changed
* Hand-wringing continues
* Grades changed back
* Hand-wringing reaches climax

And by “climax,” I mean this paragraph:

Pepperdine mea culpa 2

They spent untold hours agonizing about what the just and right thing to do was? Was, like, KILLING THE STUDENTS on the table or something? “To preserve the sanctity of the grading process, we’ve decided that the CrimPro class needed to be executed so that any embarrassment over the leaked grades could die with them. We mourn the loss of these fine students, and look to you, the survivors, to carry on.”

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I think it’s a big deal when an exam is reused or recycled, which gives some students an unfair advantage. But here, the students earned these grades. There’s not an allegation of exam impropriety here. Just an accidental disclosure. It’s not ideal but, dude, don’t get a “C.” Don’t get a “C,” and you don’t have to worry about who might see your transcript.

Otherwise, drink away your embarrassment like a goddamn adult.

(Flip to the next page to see the dean’s letter in full.)

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