The Class from Hell

[Bayesian1701]

I am in this class with 8 other Ph.D. students ranging from 2nd (my year) to 4th years.  It's supposed to be a one semester credit hour elective with rotating topics that is pass fail. The point of this is to widen our breadth of knowledge.  The syllabus said we needed no background knowledge of the topic and the entire class was in that boat. It was taught by someone from another university none of us had ever had before. He was only on campus to teach the lectures, and we where given the assignments the day before he left. And while I started the homework as quickly as I could I couldn't complete it or ask questions before he left. So stopping by office hours to talk about the assignments is not an option.  The syllabus mentioned 12 papers as references, but when the class started this snowballed to an entire textbook (designed for a three hour long semester course), and 5 separate book chapters plus the articles.  In other versions of this course there was only a few homework questions, but in this class we had to due a long and theoretical homework assignment and a project that he anticipates taking us three whole days of work.  He isn't responding to my emails and I can't go by to see him in person because he is thousands of miles away with a three hour time difference. I haven't found anyone that can figure the homework out and it's due on Tuesday which is also during  our spring break.  I've spent about probably 30 hours on it so far and now I am completely stuck and can't get any further until he responds. I've contacted the PhD program director and the associate head for teaching.  I haven't heard back yet from anyone. And I am currently panicking that I will fail, and that I won't know how to finish the homework in time.  And other students agree.  Does anyone have any advice or can at least confirm this class is horrible. I'm hoping that either the PhD director or the associate head will step in and intervene but that might be a unreasonable expectation.