So this is a little complicated and long, but here's the TL;DR:

A faculty member twice blatantly ignored a request that he (begrudgingly) told me he would fulfill. This cost me a semester of my scholarship and quite a bit of time straightening matters out, and nearly cost me a significant amount of money and another part of my scholarship. I don't want this to happen to other people. What should I do?

I'll refer to my home school simply as University. University is out-of-state for me, and I wouldn't be going here if it weren't for my scholarship. University isn't some fly-by-night for-profit school; they're one of the top 100 colleges in the nation. So I should be dealing with professionals here... so I thought.

University requires me to take 16 hours of field classes at another institution as part of my major. I can choose from many institutions, but there are two that the school is closely associated with. With these two, you can have your grades transferred as letter grades instead of just checkmarks, which is the usual practice for transfer classes at University.

I decided to go to one of these two institutions, which I will name College. I'm considered an in-state student at College, so I would pay significantly less there than I would at University. At a sign-up event, they mentioned that we would be billed through University at University's prices for these two, so I asked the liaison if I could pay through College instead. He raised hell and stamped his feet, but finally acquiesced and told me that it would be no problem. I calculated up the costs - it would only be about $3000 for the entire summer semester there. (Told you it was cheap.)

Since this is a big part of my major at University, they held a sign-up event to streamline matters, and I signed up for 14 hours worth of classes at College and made a note: "Charge through College." My parents cover extra college expenses for my brother and I, so after I signed up, I asked my mom to save up $3000 between January and May, and she told me that will be no problem.

Come June, I had just finished up one of my classes and was starting on my second. Then we got the bill: $25,000.

I called College to ask them what's going on. They said I was being charged through University, not College. I asked if I could get it changed over. Sure, just call University and drop your classes. I did so, and they told me that if I canceled classes, I would have to pay a drop fee of $100, and the $200 proration fee and $500 registration fee were non-refundable. "But hey, you have a scholarship and 14 hours counts as a semester, would you like to use up a semester of that instead of dropping those classes?" I worked out the classes I had to take yet, and although the schedule was much tougher, it looked doable. So I used up a semester of scholarship for the summer and everything was alright for the moment.

I decided over the fall that I wanted to finish up my classes during a winter mini-session, so I emailed the liaison to see if I could do that. He said it would be no problem. Then I asked him if I could be charged through College, as the cost difference was not insignificant. He got onto me for being cheap and not supporting University. I asked him again and never got a reply. The deadline had passed and I could not sign up for classes anymore.

Come next spring and I was short two credits for the field program. So I signed up for College again because it's very close to home and I had a great time there, save for the communication errors between University and College. This time, though, I printed out the forms myself instead of going to the sign-up event. As I was filling the forms out, I saw something that made my heart drop: "If you are not signing up through your institution, please submit to the head of your major for approval." The head of my major just so happened to be the liaison. Fuck. I asked my adviser if he could sign off on it instead and he told me that I absolutely must submit it to the liaison.

Knowing I had to see him sometime, I decided to come prepared. I had calculated the costs for me attending College with College's rates (about $1000) and attending College through University's rates (about $4000) and written these down clearly on a notecard. I had printed out estimated fees sheets straight from College and University's websites. I had asked my parents for proof of income to show that $3000 is not a paltry sum to us.

At first he almost refused to talk to me. I told him what had happened the year previous, and he said he was sorry for the confusion but happy I got a quality education. (You know... even though I took the same exact classes I would have had anyway.) I asked him if he would please be careful to put me on College's payroll this time. He accused me of, quote, "trashing [his] program". I pulled out my notecard and the tax forms and showed them to him, telling him that it was a financial decision, not a personal slight. After quite a bit of arguing, he took the notecard and said, "Sure, I'll bring up the cost difference at the next board meeting." I asked him if that meant I would be charged through College. "Of course."

Surprise surprise, the bill came in and it was $4000. I was watching for his tricks this time, though, so I got stuff straightened out through College, and again they told me that I just had to make sure to drop them from University so I wouldn't get billed twice. I called University and told them I needed to cancel my class. Deja vu.

"Well, it will be a $100 drop fee, plus the $500 registration fee and the $200 proration fee are not refundable..."

I spent HOURS on the phone with them. I told them I was getting charged for classes that I never agreed to sign up for in the first place, which required copious amounts of explaining. I was shoved around to different people, then finally someone told me I would have to contact the liaison personally. If they could get an email back from the liaison, I wouldn't be charged the drop fee, registration fee, or proration fee. I wrote out a very firm email to him and carbon-copied his secretary and the Office of the Registrar, reminding him that we had that talk that day, sent a picture of the notecard full of expenses, basically every scrap of evidence I could find that he told me one thing and did another. He did contact them back, and a few weeks later the fees were dropped from my university account. The world was right again, right?

Not quite.

I got an email later on from my scholarship provider. "Because you have dropped all of your classes for your semester at University, we are sorry to inform you that you are no longer eligible for XYZ Scholarship." It's not a major one - $500 a semester - but fuck, that covers most of my books. I called them, explained the situation, sent them copies of the emails I've sent to University and to the liaison, and thankfully they reinstated it.

I don't want other kids to get charged ridiculous amounts for classes they could be paying much, much less for, and I especially don't want to have them bullied around by this guy. However, he's a very well-respected researcher, he's been here for years and has contributed a lot to the university. I don't want to end his career, but I feel like SOMETHING has to be done.

Who should I contact? What should I do? I feel like I'm just going to get bullied by this faculty member again, or people will shake their heads at the stupid undergraduate going up against Dr. Tenure. I know there's a department at our school for academic grievances, but this is something a little different.