BROOKHAVEN, Ga. — Filing on behalf of herself and all other students who paid tuition and/or fees to attend Oglethorpe University in the spring of 2020, a student from Norcross is suing the university in a class-action lawsuit over the costs of attendance during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the filing, Brandi Kochan is seeking partial or full refunds for students who paid full tuition and mandatory activity fees for campus facilities that were not available due to the pandemic’s restrictions.
Specifically, Kochan’s court filing says the lawsuit was filed for anyone who paid to attend Oglethorpe University to receive “in-person, hands-on educational services and experiences during the spring 2020 semester and other semesters or terms affected by the Coronavirus Disease 2019, and had their course work moved to online only learning.”
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Kochan’s lawsuit says the individuals paid “all or part of the tuition for an average semester” at the cost of $19,650 for undergraduate students, with an additional $140 for mandatory activity fees.
Despite the university implementing online-only distance learning beginning in the middle of March 2020, Kochan’s lawsuit alleges Oglethorpe University has “not refunded any amount of the tuition or any of the mandatory fees” paid by students.
“Because of the University’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, on or about Mid-March 2020, the University also stopped providing any of the services or facilities the Mandatory Fees were intended to cover,” the lawsuit says, adding that “In a public release on March 12, 2020, Oglethorpe announced that it would cancel classes from March 16, 2020 through March 22, 2020 and would resume classes remotely for the remainder of the semester on March 23, 2020.”
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Saying the university failed to provide the services the students were paying for during the pandemic and the university’s in-person closure that followed, Kochan said the university had breached its contracts with students and that the institution had “elected to place the financial burden entirely upon its students by charging and retaining the full tuition and full fees when the services the University provided were not the full educational opportunities, experiences, and services that Plaintiff and the Class agreed to or paid for,” rather than offer partial refunds, credits or discounts to students who faced financial difficulties due to the pandemic.
Kochan’s lawsuit also says that she is not contesting the university’s decisions to comply with COVID-19 orders, but instead the decision by the university to “retain monies paid by students” for on-campus services that were not provided due to the lack of in-person activities.
As a result, Kochan filed the class-action lawsuit to seek damages for herself and all other similarly impacted students, to be determined through a combination of restitution, refund, reasonable attorneys’ fees and court costs, pre- and post-judgment interest on any awards, any other form of equitable monetary relief and injunctive and declaratory relief, if necessary.
Kochan’s lawsuit also requests a jury trial for the case.
Channel 2 Action News reached out to Oglethorpe University for a statement on the lawsuit. A spokeswoman for the university said “Oglethorpe has not been officially noticed on this lawsuit and are not in a position to discuss the matter further at this point.”
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