Patterico's Pontifications

12/9/2014

Great: Now Harvard and Georgetown Law Students Want to Delay Finals Due to Grand Jury Protests Too

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 5:56 pm



First Columbia, now this:

Minority students at three prestigious law schools want to delay final exams because they’ve been busy protesting grand jury decisions in the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of white police officers in New York and Ferguson, Missouri.

Student groups at Harvard Law School, Georgetown University Law Center and Columbia Law School say protests over the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases have prevented many students from preparing for exams.

University officials say students can petition administrators to have their exams rescheduled and the requests will be decided individually.

Having instituted this ridiculous program, they don’t dare deny a single request.

I have nothing but contempt for any student who would apply for such a delay.

Preparation for final exams is a responsibility, and life as a professional is full of responsibilities. If people want to protest, and they can fit that within their schedules, great. If they can’t, responsibilities come first. If you can’t meet the responsibility of preparing for final exams, how are you going to deal with that real-life deadline? The judge isn’t going to give you an extension because your due date fell on the same week as a political protest.

If I were an employer, I would want to ask any applicant from these schools if they took advantage of this cynical loophole. The purpose of such a question would be to assess their demeanor: If they did anything but roll their eyes and decry this as a ridiculous stunt, I would not want to hire them.

I would want to ask this question . . . but I would not. This behavior on my part would probably get me sued. I would recognize that in advance and would not ask the question. Nor, on the other hand, would I want to risk hiring such a fickle, responsibility-dodging individual as the people requesting delays in their finals because of political protests.

How to resolve this dilemma? Well, if I had anything to say about it, I simply would make efforts not to hire anyone from these schools who even conceivably could have taken advantage of this loophole (regardless of their color — I don’t care about that at all, just their attitude towards responsibility).

Of course, I have zero control over hiring anyone, so my opinions don’t really matter. But I wonder if people actually charged with hiring law students feel the same way.

43 Responses to “Great: Now Harvard and Georgetown Law Students Want to Delay Finals Due to Grand Jury Protests Too”

  1. This makes me angry.

    Patterico (9c670f)

  2. Stupids stunts are stupid.

    SarahW (267b14)

  3. It’s the usual suspects with the usual socialist/marxist frufra. “We just can’t deal with American jurisprudence – not even to write about and describe what we want to tear down”

    SarahW (267b14)

  4. We have to use oppressor language!

    SarahW (267b14)

  5. Obama appears to to think this is it, this is the moment. http://ace.mu.nu/archives/353644.php

    SarahW (267b14)

  6. As said elsewhere by someone else, the students may well have obtained the idea from some of their faculty.
    And that, Professor Kirke, I’m sad to say, is what they teach in these schools these days.

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  7. On two different threads I’ve tried to follow a link, and I first get the linked page, then some ad (that is slow to appear) takes over.
    Anybody else getting this?

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  8. Part of the address I get sent to is “vindicosuite”. Is this in my computer or has it attached itself to our hosts website?

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  9. Yes me too. I though I had done something wrong. UPS wants my soul.

    SarahW (267b14)

  10. MD I got the same thing. It loaded Ace for a second then the ad blanked that page out. I clicked out of there.

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  11. It did it also on the link to Longwarjournal,
    but not on Dana’s link re Gruber…

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  12. Exacalacaly, Gazzer.

    Calling the help desk…

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  13. a lot of these people are just typical ivy league trash

    they’re not going to be professionals Mr. Patterico

    they’re gonna work for the federal government

    happyfeet (831175)

  14. Part of the address I get sent to is “vindicosuite”. Is this in my computer or has it attached itself to our hosts website?

    I was having the same problem. I removed the SiteMeter code from my template and it seems to have fixed the problem.

    Patterico (9c670f)

  15. Let me know if that fixed the problem for y’all as well.

    Angry post (probably) coming soon, by the way.

    Patterico (9c670f)

  16. The vast left wing conspiracy at work…

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  17. Pat, I still got the ad.

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  18. Actually, when I clicked on the ace link above the same things happened, there for a few seconds, then blank, then eventually some UPS thing (at least it claimed).

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  19. I never wait for the ad to materialize in case I get in trouble from my IT guy. (Mrs Gazzer(

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  20. Really? This happened since comment 14? At my site or at Ace’s? (He uses SiteMeter too.)

    I think it’s a SiteMeter issue. I took down the code because I remembered something weird about vindicosuite related to them from before.

    Patterico (9c670f)

  21. You might still get the ad at Ace’s, but is it happening when you access any page at my site now?

    Patterico (9c670f)

  22. I just tried this on the other thread and got it again:
    66.past should be prologue:
    http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2014/12/6_guantanamo_detaine.php
    narciso (ee1f88) — 12/9/2014 @ 6:02 pm

    It did NOT happen on this link by Dana:
    http://hotair.com/archives/2014/12/09/gruber-wont-deny-the-white-house-wanted-to-trick-congress-into-passing-the-aca/

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  23. These are other blogs you are clicking on which may also have SiteMeter. Any problems accessing pages on this site (patterico.com)?

    Patterico (9c670f)

  24. Yeah, when I don’t use my Disconnect plug-in, these sites go wild for me too.

    Patterico (9c670f)

  25. It’s not happening on this site, but when I clicked on the link to Ace above I got the ad, just to be clear.

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  26. Law school faculties are notoriously political and almost exclusively liberal. This has been true for many decades.

    Usually they’re better at hiding it from their alumni and other potential sources of donations. This kind of nonsense should make a fair number of those say, “Not a dime, ever again.”

    Beldar (fa637a)

  27. I should’ve said, “law school faculties and administrators are notoriously political.” The top administrators (deans, assistant deans, etc.) are often also faculty members, of course.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  28. Over at Ace, in the comments,

    5 adverts now??

    Posted by: Dr. Varno at December 09, 2014 09:53 PM (fIv/H)

    It must be a problem on their end.

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  29. Why would you get sued for asking if someone took a late test option?

    seeRpea (01f6d3)

  30. Because, Raycissss, natch.

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  31. I’ve been so traumatized by this I cannot write checks. I hope everyone understands.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  32. Patterico – I think you should sell rainbow wrist bracelets with “I Delayed My Law School Finals Because Black Lives Matter” or something. Commercialize that sh*t while you can!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  33. Yes, it is Sitemeter. My site went bad when it was offline, so I did not catch it from here. It’s just Sitemeter gone bad again. It’s done it before.

    nk (dbc370)

  34. it’s become selfaware, run for your lives

    narciso (ee1f88)

  35. I am so shaken by Ferguson and now NYC that I’m afraid it would not be prudent to pay my tax bill this year.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  36. I’m trying to figure out a theory under which Patterico, as a prospective employer, could be sued for asking that question that does not have the word “California” in it. Nope, nada. “Twerp” is not protected under the ADA or any civil rights statutes as far as I know.

    nk (dbc370)

  37. It has been noted that the “millennials” have been having difficulties finding good jobs; now you know why.

    The elderly Dana (f6a568)

  38. nk wrote:

    “Twerp” is not protected under the ADA or any civil rights statutes as far as I know.

    Shut up! You’ll give them ideas!

    The very cautious Dana (f6a568)

  39. The Brownshirts are busy:

    http://moonbattery.com/?p=53261

    DNF (7b206c)

  40. I think the idea of postponing finals does not come from students, but from other people organizing demonstrations.

    Finals are not a term paper. If someone knows the material, a few days extra study won’t matter. And it doesn’t matter. Good students don’t need to study before an exam, and it won’t help anyone very much. But students who don’t feel they are not up to it, or are worried, want to study.

    So this would be the objection to participating.

    So the organizers try to get rid of the objection.

    Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58)

  41. I suggest these schools generously offer to postpone the exams indefinitely, on condition that the student never again sets foot on campus, attends a class, or claims to be a student there.

    Ray Van Dune (1b7bcc)

  42. The updated story at the link indicates the Harvard Law Dean refused to let the students delay their finals.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  43. On Tuesday, the permission to delay finals available to Columbia University law students was extended to undergraduates.

    Sammy Finkelman (8bd44f)


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