A pair of students are suing the University of Maine and the state’s public university system, arguing they are entitled to a partial refund of tuition for last semester when the coronavirus pandemic shuttered the campus in March, causing the university system to transition to a fully-remote model temporarily.

Hunter Stewart and Nehemiah Brown filed a lawsuit in good company, as theirs join over a hundred other lawsuits that have been filed against educational institutions across the country. All of which claim the educational systems did not provided the services they were charged for during the pandemic and owe their students a refund.

The two students are seeking class-action status for their lawsuit that they filed on Thursday. Stewart and Brown argues that all 21,000 University of Maine System undergraduates students are owed a prorated refund of the tuition and other mandatory fees that they paid their university last semester. The students argue they should have not been required to pay after classes moved online, citing a decline in overall quality of the education they received remotely, according to the lawsuit.

Not included in the lawsuit filed Thursday was the monetary amount the students felt should be refunded, but classes had shifted online about halfway into the 2020 spring semester.

While the University of Maine System did issue refunds for a portion of resident students’ room and board fees last semester, they did not refund any tuition or fees associated with services which include the use of recreational facilities and on-campus amenities.

Maine’s public universities did not refund tuition because the university system delivered classes online and allowed students to finish the credit hours for which they had signed up, University of Maine System spokesperson Dan Demeritt said to the Bangor Daily News.

“We cannot comment further on pending litigation but stand by our record of safely continuing academic instruction for our students through the pandemic,” Chancellor Dannel Malloy said Friday to the Bangor Daily News.

“The university breached its contract by failing to provide the promised in-person and on-campus live education as well as the services and facilities to which the mandatory fees pertained throughout the semesters affected by Covid-19, yet has retained money paid by plaintiffs and the class for a live in-person education and access to these services and facilities during these semesters,” Stewart and Brown said in the lawsuit.

The lawyers representing Stewart and Brown did not respond to requests for comment by the Bangor Daily News on Friday.