Liberty University Donald Small '06 I completed all of the requirements for my degree in 2011, a MA in Pastoral counseling, with a 3.4 grade point average. I applied for graduation in 2012. I was told it would take 6 weeks, it has tak Lynchburg Virginia

I started BUSI 342(regarding: 201320 Spring 2013 BUSI 342-D07 LUO) with Professor Yolanda Simmons eager to try and get a
very good grade as it is my last class to finish so I can finally graduate. I
did my first discussion board and was surprised to only get 35/50 points. I did
not receive a review or explanation of why I lost 15 points, just the grade
only. There should be professional protocol required by the LU for teachers to
explain why they are knocking down a grade. It is unprofessional for the
student to have to guess and be silently frustrated and stressed. I tried to
email Professor Simmons to see what the problem was and why I missed so many
points and there apparently was a global email outage (documented) where no-one
could get emails about2-3 days. I was then very frustrated about this and the
wait was about 1 hour to tech support(IT)and my phone battery died before I could get
this resolved. I then proceeded to go about my life trying to take care of my 3
kids and 2 jobs and happened to have a major medical emergency the night I was going to
work on discussion board 2 for this class. I was ok the next day and so I
proceeded to work on db2 the night it was due and could not send db2 in on time
due to a known blackboard outage issue that was happening. I was only 20
minutes late past midnight of db2 deadline so figured the professors usually
are abreast of the blackboard outages and that calls were very long for IT(tech dept) and
they would understand this. I ended up not even receiving credit as the
professor said the paper was late and it did not have a required Bible verse
in it as her instructions stated. I would have known there was a required Bible
verse if I would have professionally received a review of my 1st
discussion board (as I have from every other professor in the past)        . It is just plain harsh to give a
failing grade to a student when several factors that should have been there for
my success were totally missing. Such as: 1. Email(communication) was down 2. 1st
paper was never reviewed so I knew how to improve the second discussion board.
3. Blackboard was having outages          I
then proceeded to call and leave a message on the phone number listed in
Professor Simmons blackboard contact info(because email was not working)and she
said I was disrespectful to call and leave a message at 1am in the morning. I
work the night shift and this is the only time I have access to a working phone
line.(between 10pm-6am) Also, only 3 out of 8 students are participating in the
group project that is worth 1/3 of the grade. I personally think group projects
should be dropped because there is not enough input by the professor into these
projects and have seen my grade suffer in the past due to this student
participation issue and lack of by the professor.   It is like walking in the dark the getting stabbed because you
walked into the wrong place and the right people were not protecting you
because the they were either clueless or lazy.(as a metaphor to getting a
failing grade on a group project) My thought was that the other students in my
group were giving up because the same issues were maybe happening to
them(regarding bad db grades etc..) and it was affecting morale of the whole
class.
The student advocate department is slowly working with me and this is
why I have not called an attorney yet. I feel as though I have financed a
very expensive "college degree in failure" because of the ignorance and
ineptitude of this and other similar situations to this that happened
at Liberty.