One of my friends is about to finish his masters and submitted his Thesis a while ago.He got the reply from his professors saying that they did not want to accept his Thesis since he did not put the references correctly.They want him to repeat it with another theme.

Here is the thing,it was part of his Thesis that he had to describe an area which he partly took from Internet and put in his Report.He had put the name of the website at the end of each paragraph,which they say is wrong and they preferred to be the link of the website and date of download.But this way of putting reference was never mentioned in any guidelines and many of his colleagues who did not do it that way all passed the exam.

He was told(Orally)that the guidelines contain the information about how to put the references and there are other students who knew it and did that way(which is not true).He is been asking them to give him these things in written form,but they are not ready to do it and still ask him to repeat it,otherwise he will be ex matriculated from the program.

Is there a way he can fight legally?Anyone got any experience with it?

Deepak

contact ASTA or whatever the students union is called. They may help your friend in this regard.

Well, in thesis reports it is normally recommended to keep the dates when the web links were downloaded/referenced to as they might expire in the future.
I think there is no standard rule to have them but students usually do so as to avoid an issue like this.

If the professor does not accept , its his call. I think the prof might treated that as a copy or is not happy with the thesis. You can try but then its a trivial case. Repeating second time is also an option but if the 2nd one is also rejected , then the degree will be canceled.