How to Change a C to an A+: The Story of the 27th Amendment
Warning: changing your grade might require changing the US Constitution!
Have you ever had an instructor give you a C on a paper and later turn the grade into an A+? It happens and, in this case, the college in question didn’t even issue an A+. The professor gave the student one anyway and it might be the only A+ ever recorded at the University of Texas, Austin.
If you want the same thing to happen, though, I have to warn you: it wasn’t easy and it took about 35 years to make it happen. This is the story of Gregory Watson who, in 1982, received a C on a paper in a political science course. Sure, college might be way behind you, but your customers, readers, and colleagues all grade you every day. You’d probably like at least some of them to change your grade, too.
What Was the Paper About?
But back to the college paper. It was about the 27th amendment. To save you searching Google for that, the amendment is the one that prevents congress from voting themselves a raise (or pay cut, for that matter) that takes effect either immediately or retroactively. It was introduced with a bunch of other proposed amendments in 1789.
In the late 1700s, ten of those amendments became the bill of rights. But the future 27th amendment didn’t get enough votes from the states to become law. A few states ratified it at the time. Ohio ratified it in 1873 to protest the “Salary Grab” where congress tried to vote themselves more pay retroactively. Well, except for Wyoming, apparently, who ratified the amendment in 1978, also in protest of a congressional pay raise. But, by and large, people forgot about it after 1792.
The C Student
But not Gregory Watson. In his paper, he looked at legal precedents that didn’t preclude the bill from still being open for ratification, even after all that time.
The teaching instructor for the course was not impressed and gave Watson a C. He didn’t think much of that, so he appealed. The professor, Sharon Waite, recalls that she glanced at it, didn’t see anything special about it, and reconfirmed the grade.
So Watson decided to take it further. He started a campaign to persuade states to ratify the amendment in 1982. Along the way, he found out about the late ratifications. Maine was his first convert in 1983 and Colorado followed suit the year after.
It’s the Law!
Everyone thought Michigan became the 38th state in 1992, although many states ratified it after that and Watson was pushing for a 50-state sweep. Kentucky ratified the bill in 1996, apparently having forgotten that they had already ratified it in 1792! That means Alabama actually tipped the scale. As of today, only four states — Massachusetts, Mississippi, New York, and Pennsylvania — have not ratified the amendment.
Amending the Grade
With the 27th amendment now law, a professor at UT Austin, Zach Elkins, learned of the story in 2016. Sharon Waite had left academia by then, but Elkins found her and persuaded her that perhaps the term paper that had changed the nation’s laws deserved an A+. UT doesn’t issue A+ grades, but Elkins and Waite submitted a grade change form for an A+ anyway in 2017. The Texas Legislature even passed a resolution congratulating Watson on his A+.
So if you don’t like the grade you got, and you are sure you deserve better, it can be changed. But you might have to wait 35 years and do a lot of extra work. That still beats the poor 27th amendment. It had to wait 202 years, 7 months, and 10 days to become law. Second place in that race? The 22nd amendment took a little less than 4 years to go from bill to law. On the other hand, what things have people told you “you can’t change that” and it is holding you back? Take a page from Gregory Watson and make it happen anyway.