Terms of Service

These Terms govern access to and use of Tolus, an oral defense service operated by Tolus, Inc. By using Tolus you agree to these Terms.

Incorporated documents

Our Privacy Policy is incorporated into these Terms by reference and governs how we handle personal data. Where a school or district enters into a signed data privacy agreement (DPA) with Tolus, that DPA is also incorporated by reference; to the extent the DPA conflicts with these Terms with respect to that school’s student data, the DPA controls.

Who can use Tolus

Tolus is intended for use by educators in K-12 schools, post-secondary institutions, and tutoring or test-prep programs. To create a teacher account, you must be a teacher, instructor, or administrator authorized by your institution to use educational software with student data.

Accounts and access

• Teachers sign in with a Google Workspace account. You are responsible for keeping your account credentials secure.
• Students are not asked to create accounts. They access defenses with a one-time PIN issued by the teacher.
• You agree not to share your account, attempt to access defenses you do not own, or interfere with the service.

Acceptable use

• Use Tolus only for educational assessment of work you are authorized to assess.
• Do not use Tolus to evaluate, surveil, or score people without their knowledge or institutional authorization.
• Do not attempt to reverse engineer, scrape, or overload the service, or to extract another teacher’s defenses.

Your content

Defense configurations, rubrics, transcripts, and scores remain the property of you and/or your institution. You grant Tolus a limited license to process this content solely to provide the service. We do not use your content to train models or for any purpose unrelated to operating Tolus for you.

The defense and scoring

• Tolus produces a score and a written breakdown for each defense. Scores are generated by a language model and represent the model’s assessment of the student’s spoken responses against the rubric you provide.
• The teacher remains the final authority on grades. Tolus is a proctoring and assessment aid; it is not a substitute for teacher judgement.
• Tolus does not detect academic dishonesty, does not accuse students, and should not be used as the sole basis for disciplinary action.

Beta service

Tolus is currently offered to selected schools as a beta. The service is provided as-is, may be modified or interrupted, and pricing for post-beta use will be communicated before any charge applies.

Termination

You may stop using Tolus at any time. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms or that pose a risk to students or the service. On termination, we will delete your data as described in our Privacy Policy.

Disclaimer and limitation of liability

Tolus is provided “as is” and “as available” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Tolus, Inc. will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, revenue, or goodwill, arising out of or related to the service. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Tolus, Inc.’s total aggregate liability arising out of or related to the service and these Terms will not exceed the greater of (a) the amounts you paid to Tolus for the service in the twelve (12) months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred U.S. dollars (US$100). Some jurisdictions do not allow certain of these limitations, so portions may not apply to you.

Indemnification

To the extent permitted by applicable law and by your institution’s own legal authority, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Tolus, Inc. and its officers, employees, and agents from and against any third-party claims, damages, liabilities, and reasonable expenses (including attorneys’ fees) arising out of (a) your misuse of the service, (b) your violation of these Terms or applicable law, or (c) your use of the service to assess or process data you were not authorized to assess or process. This section does not require any party to indemnify another in a manner prohibited by applicable law, including limits that apply to public schools and government entities.

Binding arbitration and class-action waiver

Please read this section carefully — it affects how disputes are resolved. Except for the carve-outs below, you and Tolus, Inc. agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the service will be resolved by final and binding arbitration on an individual basis, rather than in court, administered under the rules of a recognized arbitration provider and seated in Delaware. The arbitrator decides all issues, except that any question about the enforceability of the class-action waiver below is for a court to decide.

Class-action waiver. You and Tolus agree to bring claims only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person’s claims or preside over any form of class or representative proceeding. If this waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim (and only that claim) will proceed in court.

Carve-outs. Either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court, and either party may seek injunctive relief in court to protect its intellectual property or data security. This section does not apply to a school or district to the extent applicable law (including sovereign-immunity or public-entity rules) prohibits it from agreeing to arbitration or a class-action waiver; in that case those disputes are governed by the courts identified in the Governing law section.

Who this section binds. This arbitration provision and class-action waiver apply only to the account-holding teacher, instructor, or administrator who accepts these Terms. They do not apply to students, or to their parents or guardians, who are not parties to these Terms. Nothing in these Terms requires a student, parent, or guardian to arbitrate any claim, and a teacher’s or school’s acceptance of these Terms does not bind any parent or student to arbitration.

Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles.

Contact

Questions? Email hlincontacts@gmail.com.