Harvard, Columbia Law Students Demand Postponements of Winter Exams, Citing Heart-Ache Over Michael Brown and Eric Garner Decisions

I'm sure there are things that are more disqualifying in terms of future employability than the claim that one is so psychically discombobulated by happenings in the national news that one cannot do one's job without incurring unacceptable levels of mental hazard, but I'm quite sure I can't think of any right now.

The push to delay law school final examinations in light of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases has spread to Harvard Law School, as administrators at Georgetown University Law Center said students could seek delays on a case-by-case basis.

Columbia Law School was the first to allow students to ask to postpone their exams.
Students calling themselves the Harvard Law Coalition sought the delay as well as discussions about inequality....

...

Columbia's decision hasn’t gone over well with some people, and conservative publications including the Daily Caller and the New York Post ran critical stories.
George Mason University law professor David Bernstein said the delay infantilizes law students and is unfair because some students will have more time to study for exams than others.

"I can't imagine why any law student would admit that hearing about a seemingly unjust legal decision incapacitates them; how would such people function as lawyers, given that many verdicts deeply disappoint advocates for one side or the other?" he said.

Indeed. So like when one of their motions is denied on a case that has emotional resonance for them, they're gonna do what, refuse to show up for trial until the judge adopts a more understanding posture?

Charles C.W. Cooke provides analysis and racism.

Those Harvard students have produced an open letter in which they demand that their examinations be delayed. "Like many across the country," its authors claim, students "are traumatized" and "visibly distressed" -- to the extent that there is now a "palpable anguish looming over campus." The "national crisis" that has been provoked by the cases of Garner and Brown, they argue, has left them with no choice but to "stand for justice rather than sit and prepare for exams." And, like their brethren at Columbia, they contend that their "being asked to prepare for and take our exams in this moment" amounts to their "being asked to perform incredible acts of disassociation" -- requests, which taken together, have led them "to question our place in this school community and the legal community at large." The bottom line? That students must be given "the opportunity to reschedule their exams in good faith and at their own discretion."

Ugly as the Brown and Garner cases were, one can't help but feel that what constitutes a "National Emergency" or a "personal crisis" is being rather dramatically defined down here -- possibly to the vanishing point.

Dear Harvard Law Students,

My condolences about all the sand, with respect to your vaginas.

Signed,

Shut the Fuck Up You Whiny Shits

posted by Ace at 04:39 PM

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