When you go to a place of higher education, you are focused entirely on exchanging your time and money for academic opportunities. But this coordinated exchange of value can be derailed if a school is negligent somehow. This negligence comes in many forms, but the question may remain if you can sue a school because they have not done something properly. Especially if this negligence is outside the strict level of academia, what are your options?
As you’re thinking about it, what might some of these negligent behaviors be that a school can do? On a campus, a school needs to maintain a safe environment. On every level, a school must do everything possible to disallow hostile cultures. And, there is some question as to if a school needs to do hiring and firing, you might wonder if you can sue a school for negligence if they keep an unqualified professor on their payroll.
Maintaining a Safe Campus Environment
You are paying a lot of money to go to school. If you’re walking from one class to another on a school’s campus, you should not end up slipping on a puddle of water or a patch of ice. In this case, you may be able to sue a school for negligence. They should be paying groundskeepers to make sure that you have safe pathways from one place on campus to another.
If they don’t provide enough money to groundskeepers to handle this, then you have every right to take the school to court if you are injured somehow.
Allowing a Hostile Culture
There is a lot of freedom on school campuses. However, this freedom does not mean that schools can ignore hostile cultures. You see news about fraternities and sororities being hostile, and you wonder how it was that the school did not figure out how to prevent these organizations from creating issues within their framework.
There needs to be some sort of regular check-in process where groups can be disbanded by the school if their association with the academic institution does not provide a positive learning environment.
Keeping Bad Professors on Staff
There are good teachers, and there are bad teachers. However, in a higher education academic environment, there is some expectation of quality. If you find that you get a terrible professor in a college environment, what can you do about it? Can you sue the school to get rid of this professor?
If it is a required class that you have to take, what are your options academically, socially, and professionally? It’s essential to keep these concerns at the lowest level possible initially, but then escalate it as necessary if you feel you are not getting the value out of your money.
