William v NUS Final Papers [2007]

Claimant: William
Respondent: NUS Final Papers

Note
*Definitions:
NUS "National University of Singapore", Singapore, a University the claimant had his tertiary study.
NUS Final Paper refers to the final examinations every student undergoes in NUS at every end of Semester.
Mug in this whole context disown the meaning of criminal action with the intention of robbery. Rather, it is understood as in implied meaning casually "working your a*s off to study and score well in your modules"

Panel: corresponding module paper Lecturers and/or Tutors

Judgment: Pending

Facts and Analysis:
William, as one of the University Students, entered a contract with the University as he responded to the letter of admission. Four elements of contracts namely offer, acceptance, consideration and intention to create legal relation were achieved thus as these were, a valid legal contract existed between both parties.

NUS gave an invitation to treat (not offer) by giving information regarding NUS’ admission for Academic Year 2006/2007 in 2006, thus claimant was induced to give an offer by participating in NUS placement test to meet the requirement to be admitted. After the mentioned test, the claimant was informed to take TOEFL (Test of English as Foreign Language) due to the fact that the claimant did not use English as mother tongue and that NUS stated that in order to be put under consideration for admission and because of failure to meet the requirement for English paper in NUS placement test, the claimant needs to take the TOEFL test and gain certain score.
After the offer has been made by the claimant by participating in aforementioned tests and submitting the result to NUS, a counter-offer was made by NUS to the Claimant by giving an offer of admission with notification that the admission was in one of the available courses “Project and Facilities Management” and other clauses thereon.
Acceptance existed as soon as the claimant responded to the university that he was eager to take that course and legally hold the title as NUS undergraduate, based on the claimant’s considerations reflected that he decided not to take Placement test for National Universities (Claimant is Indonesian) after having his application to Nanyang Technological University turned down and gave a positive response to NUS instead.
Intention to create legal relation existed and was supported by the consideration that the claimant as a reasonable person was assumed aware of the clauses on the letter of offer of admission.

Based on these facts, the contract present here is considered as bilateral contract as both parties are clear of their actions when getting into the contract.

Impact of the contract: that the claimant is part of NUS as one of NUS undergraduates, in accordance to the case, the claimant, as NUS undergraduate, is required to have final examinations for the particular modules he is taking for the semester in whose start the modules classified as compulsory and/or elective compulsories and/or elective were taken by the claimant.

And thus the implied terms between the claimant and NUS where respondent is a part therein is to be described in the following sentences. Every semester, all NUS students are “judged” or “evaluated” their educational performance throughout the whole semester, by means of Semester Average Point (SAP) which is later expressed with the compiled grades of their performance for the whole period of study in the university, the Cumulative Average Point (CAP). More description: The highest point for CAP is 5.0, in this claimant’s case after two semesters, he accented that he obtained 3.0 out of 5.0. In which in most peers’ view is assumed as unsatisfactory and he used the word “terrible. For the respondent (NUS Final Papers) in this semester are the most determining factors for the claimant’s CAP, thus back to the purpose of the paragraph, the implied term between the two parties is that the claimant owes a duty of care to attain a “reasonable” score, and the onus of not taking care of which, is that NUS applies restitutio in integrum (doctrine of restitution where it reverts both parties to original position as if the contract between both parties is never performed), as the consequences of a breach of an implied term.
Taking into the context of tertiary study, the situation would be where it would be treated as if NUS never admitted the claimant into the university, in simple words, “expelled”: expulsion from the university.

As quoted from the claimant: “Dear honored Judge Panels and Distinctive Wise Lords, and the respondent, if I am to be expelled from the university, light of hope would be dimmed and all of my 1.5 year study and experience until now have been wasted. Thus here I am claiming for justice.”

Focus of the Case: The one year of study for which the claimant obtained 3.0 for his CAP has passed and that the decision for the CAP is final and binding, thus the focus shift to the third semester that has just passed. More description: This semester, the claimant is to deal with the particular modules as depicted above as NUS Student, the following modules and their comments from the claimant:

Note before the description: The claimant was totally inspired by an animated Japanese cartoon series (commonly referred as “anime”) so called “Full Metal Alchemist” with its popular quote normally during the start of the show “people cannot gain anything without sacrificing anything. It’s the principal of equivalent trade.” Based on this quote whose principle is very similar to Sales and Goods Act where the basis is there should be a trade between parties for one party receive one good and other party receive any goods with equivalent value from that party in order to have valid sales contract, inclusion of third party is also explained. But in this case, the point of view is changed to that of claimant’s enquiry whether the goods he “sacrificed”, accordingly, the efforts spent for the semester, is equivalent to the goods he will obtain, the grades in order to attain at reasonable rate. Counter-argument: although the example might not be seen as related but, it can be said that the claimant entered another contract by sitting for examinations and based on how he does and how he performs for the semester, obtain grades for the modules. Preparation for examinations is referred as mugging (explained).

(1)ES2007D – Professional Communication: English module where Grammatical mistakes is less major concern than the interactivity, communicativeness and the professionalism of means of communication with English as the media for the means. At the beginning of the semester the claimant was not confident to compete with the cohort with the role of “foreigner” he is holding where his educational background were in the basis of Bahasa Indonesia (National language for Indonesian). Moreover in his 20-people sectional teaching class, he was the only Indonesian out of two foreigners, the other one was Malaysian, and the rest were of course Singaporeans, who are supposedly older in age and more mature in experience and better in English, than the claimant. The teaching staff for that particular class at the first start of the class stated firmly for those who skip at least 2 classes within the semester will be rewarded with degradation of one point (maximum grade 5 becomes 4, no conversion, just subtraction) for the module.

The Claimant admitted that he thought that he was the worst speaker in the class when it came to speech. He also added that even for his own mother tongue language he would have that much of confidence for speech skill. As expected from himself, he didn’t do very well for the speech assignment.

The Claimant also stated that throughout the whole semester he had to meet up with his project mate frequently in order to pursuit the pace of producing report as the first assignment, which was indeed the heaviest workload for others as well. However, the condition was other project group had 3 members to work on the report while the claimant’s group only consisted of himself and his sole project mate. Same workload with less manpower to cope with, yet despite the teaching staff’s saying that the expectation for the one with 2 members is less than normal groups, there were no reason to slack the assignment off, instead the claimant felt that his group had more pressure than normal group. The claimant’s group was the only group with 2 members in his class and this is due to the class had 20 people and 1 group had to have only 2 members.

For the preparation of this particular module, it was near to zero due to the taxing preparation for the Claimant’s De-Stress Session at the hostel where the claimant is a Resident Assistant, and holding this event was in his job scope and most of the time, the week provided to mug for PF2101 as would be described more on the following paragraph. The only things done which was connected to the final test were doing the previous year’s paper during one of the module’s class, and brief reading during the last minutes in the bus from the hostel where the claimant is staying at to the examination venue.

The claimant mentioned that the module has been very helpful for him to assist him in writing reports and email correspondences in his job scope as the aforementioned Resident Assistant, and yet he felt he did his best for the module and would not be disappointed regardless of his grade.

(2)PF2101 – Project Management Law: At prima facie (in the first place), the claimant complained that this module was inhumane. As the assignments were “outstanding”ly bad where the claimant was one of the only 8 people in the class who got D and D+ for the first assignment, 8 hours sleepless night was spent for that particular assignment, but the second one the claimant improved his score with a B-. The Claimant, as a reasonable measure of act, printed all of the lecture notes and skimmed them for four days, additionally printed more than 100 case-notes to be referred to since the final paper for this module was an open book examination.
During the skimming which is the preparation for the final paper, it was not uncommon for the claimant to slack “a bit”, but the claimant admitted that it was his first time reading/studying seriously for any papers/examination he has in his life, and the reason for it was that he was afraid of failing the module which may result in severe drop for his CAP despite his frequent mumbling that the materials to be tested were too much for him. Due to claimant’s poor English language, he even made a page of difficult vocabularies for him to refer at the exam.

Intermezzo in case readers are tired of this document: The Claimant’s comrades as usual would lift up their goods, most probably their slippers, hold it onto their hands afterwards resembling orders in marching or flag rising ceremony, with the purposely composed tone as if they are insinuating or with the mocking language style hailing the word “Huh? William studies?”, and they would drop the goods they placed in their hold, as an over-exaggerated action for petrified or shocked as if they had witnessed a phenomenon even rarer(from dictionary.com for more rare?) event than blue moon.
The Claimant thus admits that he hopes maybe for once or twice they without their conscience mistakenly hold their personal computers(in this case is laptop) while conducting this action.

Back again for the PF2101: Project Management Law, after the paper was finished, the claimant unspokenly showed a sign of disappointment as he told his acquaintances that he didn’t use any of the cases that he printed out, hoping that it could have been useful, and moreover, that the question were half multiple choice questions and half an essay question which gave the probability that the assessment later on for CAP might incur a bit of luck.

But after a while, the claimant gave a different response of what he felt of this module: He retracted his feeling of hatred and placed the disappointment at blame on himself where he confessed that he should have studied harder throughout the semester reasonably like what his classmates had done particularly for this module. He also admitted that this module actually was unexpectedly interesting as he realized it only after the paper, only that it required constant approach of study which is not the nature of the claimant. This sign of interest can be described from the weblog (blog) which is imitating the traits of those existing in one legal case document normally used as references for other cases.

(3)PF2102 – Structural Systems: As the only module which has the element of “science” not “social science” (physics) among all of the modules the claimant was taking in the third semester, the name explains itself. The claimant during the semester, despite his skipping this module’s lectures (weekly lessons), he constantly caught it up with the tutorial, with the aid from his comrades from faculty of Engineering, for whom the module is considerably easy, for the preparation for tutorial. This had increased the claimant’s confidence to score well in the calculation part for this particular module.

However, the claimant seemed biasedly overconfident, as the for the assignment, which constitute quite a huge part of the total score, was screwed up as he obtained only 22.5 out of 28 as he forgot the basic principal for its calculation where the calculation was already correct but the analysis of the total structural system was totally mistaken. This is also partially contributed from his immature operation of the assignment as he only started 2 days before the extended deadline for submission which the deadline is the same with the second assignment for PF2101 above.

During the preparation for the final paper, the claimant focused more on latter lecture notes due to the fact that the tutorials he was able to do were mainly from the earlier lecture notes, and though said he faced difficulties in understanding those notes when preparation time were not enough to refer back to the webcasted lectures when this is the only module providing webcasted recorded lectures. Nonetheless, he attempted the previous year’s paper and managed to find the way for the calculation which added the points for his confidence.

On the day of final paper itself, only then he realized that there is one part of calculation he missed out which was not in the tutorial nor in latter part of lecture notes; it was in the earlier part of the lecture notes. And not only that, He missed another calculation either because he was negligently careless or the complicacy of the question exceeds more than that of normal tutorial questions. To add on his bad fortune on the performance, the previous year’s paper included two relatively not easy questions which the he managed to find the trick to solve it, those two question out of one same subject, the subject was never out on his paper. Theoretical part question was his weakness.

(4)LAC1201 – Chinese Language level 1: The only module which the claimant said to have near to full attendance for the lecture, but failed to attend one tutorial where attendance to lecture is not grade but for the tutorial is the opposite. The reason of choosing this module was that the claimant has expressed that he felt the urge of learning Chinese language where the fact that he is staying in a Chinese speaking country and the fact that he is Chinese race and those who are able to speak Chinese will start speaking Chinese with him if they had just known him for the first time. This reasoning and the module itself have also motivated the claimant to proceed to higher level of Chinese language module in the upcoming semester, level 2.

For his very first class test in the tutorial, a considered-as-a-very-silly-mistake has encouraged the claimant to study hard for any upcoming tests and the final paper. The mistake was that the question asked for the Chinese of Novel which the correct answer should be “小说” where literally it means small speech in direct translation and the claimant actually answered “小书” where it literally means small books due to the reason that the thought that novel is a type of book. Thus for the final paper, he hoped not to make anymore silly mistakes and that was why he spent quite a time to prepare for some probable to be examined Chinese phrases and the words themselves. He was confident that he was capable of doing quite well, and he hoped that the grade obtained would be able to neutralize any severely disastrous grades he will be getting for other module.

(5)PF2201 – Design and Scope Management: This is one of the modules that the claimant had been not attending the lecture, though he was unexpectedly visible during the tutorial session. He felt very proud when his first 20% worth of grade assignment scored an Ace (A) for the very first time; in fact it was his first A for assignments throughout his whole study in NUS. It was even higher than the dean’s list-er in his cohort who only managed to get B+, but he expressed that he supposed some luck was one of the factors of obtaining that grade. The assignment he submitted was about game developing process where almost everything were composed with his very own language and the reference based on which he got his idea was from a video clip of the “credits” on the ending of one particular video game, and where on that “credits” the departments involved in the development of the game are credited.

The second assignment which was another 20% worth of score was a group assignment, a yet after the group obtained B-, he showed some regret feeling as he mentioned that more could have been contributed by himself and so that the grade would be a bit higher and that he greatly appreciated his team’s hard work.

Preparation for the 60% final paper took the claimant 3 days of referring to the lecture notes as he was convinced that there might be some hope to score decently for this particular module, yet this was also considered as another quite astonishing change for the claimant where he spend quite some days for a particular subject, though the intermezzo applies again for this kind of preparation. And after the claimant finished his papers for this particular module, he also felt that what he did on the paper was the best of him, and again regardless of the grade, no regrets will exist for this module.

(6)PF2301 – Development and Management Technology: The only lecture the claimanot attended for this module was the first lecture and the four lectures where the class tests were held in, with the last lecture of the module was the final class test.

Before the first class test, the claimant didn’t remembered anything about the test itself thus it was of his intention to skip the class as he thought it would be just normal lecture as what usually it was. However as a matter of fortune, he had to discuss with his ES2007D project mate causing him to stay around his faculty building, and moreover the discussion was some time before the class and so he encountered his classmate who was going to the class for the test and who later reminded him about the class test itself. So, the claimant, although no preparation at all because he only remembered after being reminded when it was around only 10 minutes before the class, sat for the test, claiming that it was better than not attending the test at all.

“For the rest of the class tests, preparation felt dull” He remarked.

The worst according to him, was the final paper, where the test took on Friday, 7th December 2007 where most of his comrades already finished their papers on the day before or even earlier, which gave him almost no motivation at all to mug. Seeing his freed comrades left no mood to be interested in studying, and the fact that he had ever done the preparation before for the class tests, contributed even more. In the final day of preparation for him, which was one day before the class test itself, which was also the first day he started mugging, he didn’t really had the intention to study.

On the day itself, where the claimant wasn’t properly prepared, which he thought that the reason that the materials to be tested were indeed not too easy, in fact where he always thought that it may not be reasonable to memorize the materials to be tested, he went to the venue some minutes before the paper, and that was where he was disgusted by the comment “it’s not so difficult right? You just have to memorize what!?!?” (right refers to isn’t it if the location there is misleading, and what there refers to the expression used normally in Singapore community, that shows that the speaker insist that the statement before the what itself is of the utmost correct, or at least it is the thing be correct imperative statement, the usage is influenced probably by the hokkian [Chinese dialect where spoken also in Singapore] article “mah”) and right on that spot, the claimant felt instant surge of irritation that the classmates were mostly Singaporeans or at least were educated in an education system that requires memorizing, and so as it was the truth, the classmates were capable for that module, while the claimant wasn’t.
As the result, the claimant predicted that PF2301 would be his worst score he would get out of the rest of the modules he was taking.

So after a tiresome, according to the claimant, semester, he decided to file a claim for the appropriate score based on how he had performed. The decision from the panel shall be delayed until the entire NUS students obtain their scores timely.