Gregory Watson's C-Grade Changed Constitution

In 1982, a 19-year-old University of Texas at Austin student named Gregory Watson wrote a paper arguing that a congressional pay amendment proposed in 1789 could still be ratified because it had no deadline. His teaching assistant gave the paper a C, and professor Sharon Waite upheld the grade, prompting Watson to write to lawmakers across the country to prove them wrong. After 10 years of campaigning, Michigan supplied the decisive 38th state ratification in 1992, turning the proposal into the 27th Amendment. In 2017, 35 years after Watson wrote the paper, Waite officially changed his C to an A.

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