A lone pedestrian walks across the Memorial Mall at Purdue University, Friday, April 17, 2020 in West Lafayette. (Photo: Nikos Frazier | Journal & Courier)
WEST LAFAYETTE – Zach Church, finishing his senior year from home in Michigan, some 325 miles from the West Lafayette campus, was leaving it to his attorneys last week to parse details of a class action lawsuit bearing his name, filed in the wake of the virtual shut down of Purdue University in the days of a coronavirus pandemic.
He is, Church says, busy with other pursuits – mainly “focused on finishing out my time in college and speaking with friends that I never got to say goodbye to” – as a legal team presses Purdue in federal court to refund tuition, fees and room and board for the half-semester he and classmates were asked to clear out.
“I have much less available free time now compared to before the pandemic,” Church said, “and I’d rather not spend that time talking about the case when I could spend that time with family or on a call with friends or members of any one of the clubs I am in.”
The class action complaint, filed April 9 in U.S. District Court in Northern Indiana, claims Purdue’s $750 credit for students who complied with a university request and moved off campus after spring break didn’t come close to matching what students paid to get for the second half of the spring semester.
Church’s lawsuit claims Purdue “unjustly enriched” itself during the coronavirus epidemic and owes him – and any other student in the same boat – money back for goods not delivered, not to mention a diminished online experience.
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