After Nick Lutz, 21, blocked his former girlfriend’s phone number and deleted her from his social media contacts, his ex took the only route she could and wrote him a letter of apology. Lutz, apparently bitter over the split, then graded the letter and gave her a D-minus, sending it out on Twitter and leading to his suspension from the university of Central Florida.
University of Central Florida takes red pen to ex-girlfriend’s letter
According to a report by USA Today, it was reportedly friends who gave Lutz the idea to take a red pen and mark up his ex-girlfriend’s letter, pointing out various flaws in the missive and grading it D-minus. This led to him being suspended for violating the “harmful behavior” and “disruptive conduct” clauses of the student conduct code at the university.
Examples of his edits included his criticism of the lack of indentation in the letter, along with the introduction being too long and too much repetition. He also wrote in the left margin to say she had given no “supporting details” for her hypothesis, among other comments in red ink.
He concluded by grading the letter with a score of 61 out of 100 with the D-minus mark.
Lutz then went on to post the graded apology letter on Twitter on February 17. The post went viral and Lutz received thousands of messages, phone calls, text and emails, all telling him the tweet was “relatable” and “hilarious.” And it was funny, until the university caught up with him and found out about the tweet. According to Lutz, his tweet was all in fun and was just supposed to be shared among his friends, but he was suspended.
As noted by the New York Post, on Monday Lutz made a post to Facebook to confirm his suspension, saying this has caused a lot of stress for himself and his family. However he did point out the suspension has violated his freedom of expression, saying under the 1st Amendment it doesn’t matter who agrees or disagrees with his actions.
He went on to say that when your school decides what posts they like or dislike, everyone should be scared and stand up against this kind of action.
Student files an appeal against his suspension and wins
On July 17 Lutz filed an appeal against the university’s decision to suspend him and a few short days later, the suspension was reversed. Reportedly the student conduct office uncovered some “irregularities” that may have affected the outcome of the student’s hearing.
Lutz, relieved that his suspension had been dropped by the university, headed back to Twitter to post a copy of the notification document relating to his appeal. He said in his caption that after what has been a very long process, he is pleased to announce he had won his appeal and that all charges have been dropped.