1999 Law Handbook - Grievance procedures

Grievance procedures

General
Individual student complaints
Complaints about administrative matters

General

The Faculty of Law has, for many years, maintained systems and promoted practices which are designed to minimise the incidence of legitimate student grievances and to ensure that complaints by students are dealt with promptly and fairly.
Students are represented on the faculty board and a number of committees of the board, including the Graduate Studies Committee. Matters of general concern to students may be ventilated in these forums. Such matters may also be raised for consideration by the Law School Liaison Committee a committee on which academic staff and students are equally represented.
There is an association of graduate students in law and its officers may refer complaints of a general nature to the faculty registrar, who is the nominated faculty grievance officer.

Individual student complaints

It is generally understood that the subdean is a kind of faculty ombudsman and if students have a complaint about some academic matter which affects them personally, they should normally take their complaint to the Chair, Graduate Studies Committee. How the complaint is handled will depend very much on the nature of the complaint.
In some cases the chair will advise the student to go to the teacher concerned and at the same time advise that teacher of the nature of the concern and what might be done to deal with it. Occasionally the chair of the Graduate Studies Committee may consider the complaint so serious that it is appropriate for him or her to refer the complaint to the dean.
In this event the dean will convene a four-person ad hoc committee, to be known as the Student Grievance Committee. The composition of the committee will be:

a senior member of staff nominated by the dean to act as chair;
two members of academic staff from a panel nominated by Executive Committee;
the President of the Monash Law Graduate Students' Association (MLGSA) or nominee.

Full details of university policy on student academic grievance procedures can be found in the Student resource guide.
See the chapter called 'Faculty information' for details of faculty policy in relation to:

student responsibility for subject choices;
set work and class attendance;
calculators;
transcription;
faxing of assignments;
policy for feedback on class tests, research papers and essays;
cheating;
plagiarism;
university discipline procedures.

Complaints about administrative matters

The manager for student relations and inquiries receives complaints from students about administrative matters and is charged with investigating and settling complaints.