The University of California distributed roughly $40 million to nearly 35,000 students last month who took part in a class-action lawsuit filed against the UC system on claims of unjust fee increases.
Kashmiri v. The Regents of the University of California began in July 2003, when student plaintiffs filed the lawsuit against the Board of Regents claiming a breach of contract.
In March 2006, a San Francisco County court ruled in favor of the students, stating that student fees had been raised despite written promises from the university. The ruling was upheld by the First District Court of Appeals in November.
‘The court found that the contract was breached with three different student subclasses: the spring 2003, the summer 2003 and the professional student subclasses,’ said Andrew Freeman, one of the attorneys who represented the student plaintiffs in the case.
On Sept. 20, 2008, the Superior Court of California approved a distribution plan for the settlement, which alloted differing amounts for each subclass.
UC spokesman Ricardo Vazquez said that student fees would be increased about $60 per student for five to six years in order for the university to meet the payment requirements dictated by the court.
The court ruled that students were told by UC literature in the form of online statements and published material that fees would not be altered for the time the students were enrolled. However, the regents voted to raise fees three times, ranging from charges of $400 to nearly $10,000.
‘Though the court found the university had raised fees when they had promised not to, there is a clause in the student contract that says that it may raise fees at any time, without warning or explanation,’ Vazquez said.
Freeman said that many of the students had paid their fees in full for the spring 2003 or summer 2003 semesters, only to later find they owed money for fees that had been tacked on after the academic calendar had begun.
The plaintiffs were undergraduates, graduates and professional students who were affected by the fee increases, including lead plaintiff and former UC Berkeley law student Mohammad Kashmiri.
The spring 2003 student subclass includes students from UC Berkeley and other UC professional schools that operated on the semester system at that time.
The summer 2003 student subclass included UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Francisco and UCSD graduates and undergraduates who registered for summer courses in early May 2003.
Readers can contact Justin Gutierrez at [email protected].