Alumni Association settles suit with graduate certificate holders over alumni status
The AA promised the former students privileges. Then, it took them away.
By CHRISTINA CHKARBOUL & EVA HARTMAN
Former students holding graduate certificates sued the USC Alumni Association in June 2022 for revoking their status as USC alumni, thereby revoking the privileges status brings, including career services, a lifetime usc.edu email address, USC Credit Union membership and access to alumni clubs.
Following a year of court dealings and negotiations, the AA tentatively settled the class-action suit, agreeing to pay out $81,550 in gift certificates to the USC Bookstore to the suit’s 1,631 class members, averaging $50 each.
The USCAA agreed to renew graduate certificate holders’ alumni status and membership in the Alumni Association, reinstating their privileges of accessing the alumni network. Since a monetary value cannot be placed on most alumni privileges and the opportunities lost because of the plaintiffs’ inability to access them, the USCAA will distribute the gift cards representing the discounts afforded from time to time to members of the USCAA.
The plaintiff, Brian Ralston, filed the suit June 1 last year on behalf of himself and other graduates of USC’s graduate certificate programs from the year 2000 to the present. In the suit, Ralston alleged the USCAA had committed a breach of contract, a breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, negligent misrepresentation, false advertising, and more in revoking the former students’ alumni status. In the year that litigation was underway, the USCAA paid $165,000 in legal fees.
Ralston received his graduate certificate in scoring for motion pictures and television in May 2002. A letter from the USCAA shortly following his graduation, enclosed as Figure 16 in the complaint, congratulated Ralston and welcomed him to the association.
His membership, the USCAA wrote, “lasts forever” — but he soon realized the association had revoked his alumni status. He was no longer searchable in USC’s alumni directory, the suit alleged, which discredited him to potential employers and others wishing to verify his educational history.
Ralston first noticed a change had been made to his and other graduate certificate holders’ alumni status when a friend of his tried to use an alumni discount on an Apple computer through the USC Bookstore’s educational pricing and was denied. Ralston realized the USCAA had revoked those privileges, suddenly and without prior notice, from many who had graduated with graduate certificates.
“As a private university, I think USC and the USC Alumni Association with it can do what they want, but they can’t retroactively change something that was given in the past and promised in the past,” Ralston said in an interview with the Daily Trojan.
The suit alleged that, starting around 2000, the USCAA had advertised that a USC degree grants access to alumni status and the slew of benefits that come with it. Ralston entered his certification of program completion, included as Figure 21 in the complaint, to prove his entitlement to the advertised benefits, reading “Degree: Graduate Certificate.”
The USCAA used to send out physical alumni cards to graduated students before implementing digital cards, Ralston said. The cards prove alumni status and allow former students to access discounts, for instance, at applicable on-campus restaurants and coffee shops as well as the USC Bookstore. Ralston still has his card asserting his alumni status, but he’s unable to use it to access the benefits he previously could, he said.
The USCAA and the University falsely represent “notable” graduate certificate holders — those who’ve won industry awards like Emmys and Oscars — as having alumni status, the suit alleges, though the former students no longer benefit from the associated privileges.
“Another point that motivated me to want to bring this case and try to solve this problem is [that] whenever we would be recognized as USC alumni, it was because it benefited the University,” Ralston said.
Lizelle Brandt, an attorney representing Ralston, pointed to a 2019 Facebook post in which USC announced that four of its alumni had been awarded an Oscar that year — one of whom was composer Ludwig Göransson, who received a graduate certificate in 2008. The Thornton School of Music also characterized Göransson as an “alumnus” in a July article about his role in composing the score for “Oppenheimer.”
According to a screenshot obtained by the Daily Trojan, Göransson does not appear in the USC alumni directory, suggesting he does not hold official alumni status.
Composers Christophe Beck — who scored “Frozen” (2013) — and Marco Beltrami — who scored “Scream” (1996) — are also graduate certificate holders listed on Thornton’s website as “notable alumni.”
Students in the graduate certificate program, Brandt said, pay full tuition to attend USC and often take on more units than students in master’s programs do.
The USCAA, she said, cooperated with Ralston’s attorneys and agreed to return alumni status and benefits to Graduate Certificate holders.
“We’re very pleased that USC, actually … they came to us pretty quickly to try to resolve the matter,” Brandt said.
The settlement, so far, is tentative: The court will evaluate whether the terms reached are fair for all class members, not only Ralston and the USCAA, Oct. 11.
