My least favorite college class was a physics course, supposedly for non-majors, which I took only to meet my graduation requirements. One week, we spent a great deal of class time going over some rather complex material in the main textbook. The following week, the professor gave a pop quiz–on completely different material, which I (along with many of my classmates) had not read very closely. Needless to say, I thought the whole thing was rather unfair.
A recent GAO bid protest decision brought back those unpleasant memories. In Rocamar Engineering Services, Inc., B-406514 (June 20, 2012), an agency gave an extra test to an unprepared contractor–and only that contractor. Fortunately, unlike my grade in that physics course, the result of this unfair pop quiz was overturned, by way of a sustained GAO protest.
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