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Alumnus claims students deserve fee refund for campus services they couldn’t use during lockdown
A private Catholic college in New York that shut down during COVID-19 recently agreed to a settlement deal in a class action lawsuit filed by a former student.
If approved by a judge, the Le Moyne College settlement would award former students up to $2,500, Syracuse.com reports.
“Le Moyne was one of many institutions across the country that were served lawsuits related to the transition to online instruction in the beginning months of the pandemic, which indicates the importance to college students of in-person learning,” college spokesperson Joe Posta told the news outlet in a statement. Posta declined to comment further on the litigation.
The settlement agreement, filed in court last week, came about after alumnus Arthur Germakovski sued the institution.
Germakovski, who graduated in 2021, claimed the college should have refunded students’ tuition and fees when it canceled in-person classes in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The college did partially refund students for their room and board after the campus shut down in March 2020, but Germakovski alleged in his lawsuit that students were entitled to further reimbursements.
More specifically, his lawsuit pointed to the “$500 mandatory comprehensive fee that covered health, technology and activities as well as a $65 science laboratory fee and $10 chemistry breakage fee,” which covered on campus resources that students did not have access to during the lockdown, according to the report:
In the settlement agreement, Le Moyne said it is willing to pay $243,206 to create a common fund to pay students who took classes in spring 2020. One-third of the payment could be used toward lawyer fees, according to court documents.
More than 2,000 people are eligible to receive a payment. It’s unclear how much each student could get. As the named plaintiff, Germakovski could receive up to $2,500, according to court documents.
More than 70 higher education institutions have faced similar lawsuits since the 2020 pandemic, according to the report. The outcomes have varied, with some resulting in settlement agreements and payouts, and others being dismissed.
The pandemic led to other lawsuits as well, including challenges to campus vaccine mandates. Some are on-going, including one filed by a disabled Marine veteran who alleges Mount St. Joseph University police berated him for refusing the COVID shot, The College Fix reported in June.
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