Who Should You See?

For a course-related grievance, the possibilities include: your tutor or demonstrator, your lecturer, your program director, or a grievance officer. For a harassment-related grievance, the people mentioned above may be able to help if you are a student, or, if you are a CSE employee, you can approach your supervisor or supervisor's supervisor (if the supervisor is harassing you), or a grievance officer. For a grievance related to claimed exploitation (e.g. of a casual tutor or top-up scholarship holder by a lecturer in the course they are tutoring, mentoring, or demonstrating in) talk first with the lecturer, then if necessary go to a grievance officer.

You should also consider whether you should instead be contacting:

Who is the School Grievance Officer?

If you have a grievance that has to do with the School of Computer Science and Engineering, you can appeal to a School Grievance Officer, currently

Who	e-mail	Remark
Ken Robinson
Gabi Keller

Putting it in Writing

If the grievance has to do with a course that you are enrolled in, then you should in the first instance either discuss the problem with the lecturer or your tutor or better, express the problem in writing and send the written description to your lecturer. Reasons that a written description of the problem might be better are:

• You are more likely to remember and put down in writing all the relevant facts - in an oral discussion of the problem you may not make your case in the best way;
• In an oral discussion, you lecturer may feel under pressure to make a decision in your favour, and in an effort to make a considered decision may put you off - you will find this frustrating;
• Because you feel strongly about your case, you may say something that you later regret. Your lecturer will, of course, try not to be influenced by any inappropriate behaviour, but lecturers are only human.

On the other hand, if the matter is a minor one - e.g. a mistake in adding up marks on a test paper, then usually a calm personal approach to the tutor or lecturer is sensible, at least as a first attempt to resolve the problem.

Should you see your Program Director?

In some cases, it might be appropriate to talk to your Program Coordinator next (see table below).

If you contact a Grievance Officer or your Program Coordinator in writing, be sure to include your full name and student number. This is particularly important if you are sending a paper letter, or an e-mail from a non-CSE account. If you are complaining about a particular person, we will of course be contacting that person to get their version of events. If you do not wish for your identity to be revealed to the person about whom you are complaining, please indicate this.

Program	Coordinator
BE Computer Engineering	Sri Parameswaran and Ashesh Mahidadia
BE Software Engineering	Ken Robinson
BE Bioinformatics	Bruno Gaeta
BSc Computer Science	Tim Lambert and Achim Hoffmann
Undergraduate Thesis	John Shepherd or your program director
Postgraduate Coursework Programs	Eric Martin
Postgraduate Research Programs	Albert Nymeyer

Approaching one of these people might be appropriate, for example, if the problem affects many or all persons studying for the same degree as you.

Applying for a Re-Mark

If your grievance is that you don't feel you were awarded a fair mark for a course, be aware that you can apply to the University, through the Student Centre in the Chancellery, to either have the mark checked (make sure all assignment marks were recorded, all parts of exam marked, and final grade calculated correctly), or to have the mark checked and the whole of your exam re-marked. [Following a re-mark, your final mark could go either up or down, or remain unchanged.]

If the problem cannot be resolved by other means, you have the option of appealing to a School Grievance Officer.

If your grievance should happen to relate to both School Grievance Officers, then you could contact the Head of School, or your Faculty's Grievance Officer.

How to Approach a Grievance Officer

In most cases, you should begin by sending an e-mail to the the grievance officer describing the problem in reasonable detail and requesting an interview. Please also indicate what steps you have already taken to resolve the problem. This will allow the grievance officer to do some groundwork on your case - sometimes grievances can be resolved immediately in this way.

Abuse of the Grievance Procedure

A tiny proportion of students attempt to use the University's Grievance procedures for a range of improper purposes, including unfairly blackening the reputation of another person. UNSW has penalties for this practice.

Anonymous letters If you send to a Grievance Officer an unsigned letter (or something similar, like an e-mail from a non-University e-mail address which we cannot confirm comes from a particular student) then we will of course read the contents. However, it is unlikely that the Grievance Officer will be able to do anything about the complaint in the letter. To be able to act, we have to know who is complaining, we may have to check that they are enrolled in a CSE course/program if that is what you are complaining about, and if it is not something quickly checked and fixed, we may need to interview you about the problem. If you so request, the Grievance Officer will of course keep your identity confidential to the full extent possible, and will not reveal your identity to the person about whom you are complaining without your permission. However, in many cases, to get anywhere, we would have to tell the person about whom you are complaining what the complaint is about, so that they can (a) give their viewpoint; and hopefully (b) fix the problem.

Appeals

If you are unsatisfied with the decision of the grievance officer whom you approach, there is a chain of appeal possibilities, including the Head of School, Faculty Grievance Officer, and Registrar. Sometimes there is more than one School Grievance Officer - in this case, if you take a case to one School grievance officer, you may not seek to have your complaint considered by another School grievance officer. [Your case might, however, be referred by one grievance officer to another, e.g. because the other grievance officer has special expertise, or because the first grievance officer has too much work at the time.]

Official UNSW Grievance Policy