Nothing like a jackhammer to help you concentrate

Apparently the construction company that's building the new ND Law School and the Law School administration have had, shall we say, a failure in communication.  Yesterday was the last day of classes in the Law School, and today and tomorrow are study days, with finals beginning on Friday and continuing through next Friday.  The construction workers have also decided to follow that same schedule--for jackhammering.  Beginning Friday and continuing through next week, they will be jackhammering right next to the Law School.

Oh, and it gets worse.  Due to the jackhammering, rooms 120 and 121 will be unusable, since apparently they will be shaking as if there were a 7.0 during the work.  For those of you unfamiliar with the law school, 120 and 121 are the two largest lecture halls where many, if not most, students sit for their exams.  So where will they be taking their exams instead?  In the Main and East Reading Rooms of the Library.  I'm not even going to begin to talk about the many reasons this is an absolutely ridiculous and insane idea.  Nevermind the fact that this also displaces anyone wishing to study on the main floor of the Library.  After all, who would want to study during finals?

UPDATE:  An email was sent out from Dean O'Hara to all students explaining the insane room juggling that will be happening during finals.  According  to the email, the law school has arranged for students to use other rooms on campus during exams:

Third, during each exam, we have arranged for the use of what we are calling “back-up rooms” elsewhere on campus.  After eliminating the use of Rooms 115, 120, and 121 for exams, we fully expect the remainder of the exam rooms in the Law School to be suitable for use during exam week.  We have nonetheless arranged back-up rooms for each day of exams....We intend the back-up rooms to be available for students who conclude that the normal background noise from construction is intolerably disruptive.  Such students will still pick-up their exams in the assigned room at the Law School, but will have the option of moving to the back-up room at the beginning of their exams or moving there during an exam should they decide that they need to do so....The back-up rooms will be at different locations on campus depending on the date and times of the exams in question, but will generally be located either in the Jordan Hall of Science or the Mendoza College of Business.

I wonder why the law school couldn't simply arrange for all exams to be taken in other buildings.  I imagine the "normal background noise from construction" is going to be at a higher-than-normal level with jackhammering occurring.  It's going to be pretty disruptive to students if they are unable to concentrate and then have to pack up all their things and move to another building in the middle of the exam.  I'm not even sure how that would work with the new Electronic Bluebook software that's now being used by those typing their exams on their laptops.

Comments

[Brendan Loy]

Fire Dean O'Hara.

Seriously, of all the absolutely asinine things that occurred while I was there, this might be the worst case of NDLS administrative blundering yet. I'm very glad I missed this one, and very sympathetic to the students who have to deal with it. Imagine being a 1L, taking your first set of law-school exams, with all the stress that accompanies that, and having to deal with this bullshit on top of it. Good lord. "Back up rooms"? Hey, I have a better idea. Delay the God damn jackhammering for a week. Period. End of discussion.

There is absolutely no excuse for this. None. What a fucking joke.

If I were there, I'd be contemplating organizing some sort of a mass protest/walkout thing... like, if everyone refuses to sit for the first set of exams, what are they going to do? Fail everyone? Of course, after "contemplating" this, I would quickly realize that it would never work, and that even if it did, it would mess up everyone's travel schedules and so forth, and thus I would become resigned to sullenly writing angry blog posts and e-mail missives. But I'd at least contemplate it. :)

On a totally unrelated note:

"shaking as if there were a 7.0"

Lisa, you are so a West Coast Girl. ;)

[Brendan Loy]

I had a whole e-mail written going through point-by-point why this situation is horrible, but then I decided, before going off half-cocked, that I should probably get all the facts. So I e-mailed the following to the pertinent parties:

Dear Deans O'Hara and Peshel (cc: Peter Horvath),

Hello from lovely Knoxville, Tennessee! I hope things aren't too gloomy/snowy
in South Bend, though I know it sort of comes with the territory this time of
year.

I'm writing because I've been made aware of the situation at the law school with regard to construction during final exams, and I'm very concerned about it, particularly for the new 1Ls. A friend forwarded me Dean O'Hara's e-mail, so I'm aware of the basics of the situation and the steps NDLS is taking to improve it. Frankly, I'm very much unconvinced that those improvements are sufficient. However before I express my concerns more thoroughly, I want to be fair and ask the simple, obvious question that underlies this whole issue: Why can't this particularly noisy and disruptive phase of construction simply be delayed a week? To be honest, I can scarcely imagine any reason that would be adequate to justify the extreme disruption that this situation is causing to NDLS students at this most important and stressful time of the semester. However, rather than simply assuming that the reason is inadequate, I thought I should ask first.

Best of luck with everything, and I look forward to hearing back from one of you, if you have a free moment to reply. Happy Holidays!

Sincerely,
Brendan Loy
Class of 2007

Dunno if I'll hear back. If I don't, I might fire off my half-cocked e-mail anyway, but at least now I can say I tried to get the facts first. :)

[Wobbly H]

Brenners,
How officious of you!

[yea]

ND was ranked 19th a few years ago. ND will likely not be in the top 30 when the next rankings come out. time for a change? these rankings quickly turn into self-fulfilling prophesies and its a lot easier to fall down than to climb back up.

[Derek]

First, if I had the option of taking an exam in a nice carrel in the East Reading Room with a window rather than parking in an interminable row of shoddy chairs in the windowless portal called Room 120.5, I'd take the former in a second. (Particularly because I like to stretch my legs during an exam and, therefore, prefer a location where I'm not tripping across power cords and a bunch of chairs blocking the aisle.)

Second, I would whole-heartedly oppose any effort to delay any element of construction. Delay it this week? Well, then next week it's bad weather. And the week after is Christmas. And the week after is New Year's. No, I support a full-speed ahead construction plan, irrespective of the goings-on in the law school, in order to get that new building constructed as soon as possible. A week's a week.

Third, I wonder if the so-called "back up rooms" are insufficient to hold a full class, at least at this point. Before jumping to conclusions, it may be worthwhile to pause and consider alternative explanations, such as this one.

Fourth, did they finally select new examination software? I truly hope so. I had nothing but positive experiences with ExamSoft during the bar, as did everyone else I knew, and I heard it was a "candidate" to replace SecurExam but potentially "cost-prohibitive." I'd have chipped in $100 for software that didn't shut down on me and lose portions of exam answers during three different exams.

[Derek]

ND will likely not be in the top 30 when the next rankings come out. time for a change?

yea, this is demonstrably false. For instance, Notre Dame's "acceptance rate" jumped nearly 50% between 2006 and 2007. NDLS, accordingly, deferred approximately 90 students for the Class of 2011, which means that this year's acceptance rate will be far, far more selective than not only 2007, but also 2006. That factor is just one of many that will result in an improved rate. Another factor includes a better career services office that results in higher employment rates, unlike the recent years recorded.

Accordingly, I wholly expect the "vaunted" US News rankings to rebound, though certain deficiencies (e.g., faculty prestige ranking) remain unexcusably low.

[Lisa]

Derek,

Part of the problem with the East Reading Room is that there aren't enough outlets. Apparently they're bringing in power strips, but I certainly hope that isn't just a rumor. Another problem is that you have the computer lab right next to it, complete with the noise of people working on computers and printing. I just pray someone has the sense to remove that noisy electronic three-hole punch while people are taking exams.

It's entirely possible that the back up rooms aren't sufficient to hold an entire class, but something tells me that some sort of arrangement probably could have been made to find rooms on campus that would be. I've already wondered if there will be a situation where some poor student decides to move to a back up room in the middle of the exam and there's no room there. He or she packs up their things, treks across campus, and after wasting a good 10-15 minutes of their exam time, finds that there is no room for him/her there and he/she must go back to the law school.

They also did get new software. It is apparently called Electronic Bluebook, as I mentioned earlier in the post.

[Lisa]

ND's rankings were made up of the worst possible combination last year: The acceptance rate for the class of 2009 (which was ridiculously high) and the employment data for the class of 2005 (which was both low and largely unreported). The class of '05 had no Career Services director, and as a result many of them either had more difficulty securing employment or did not want to bother to report their employment to ND due to the fact that they were so upset about basically being left to fend for themselves when it came to finding a job.

[Derek]

Power strips are (and will be) the easy solution. Furthermore, the typical noise associated with the computer lab is, well, typical for students studying during the school year and shouldn't be too terrible during an exam. Finally, I imagine they would at least post signs reminding people that an exam is in process and have the lab monitors keep the peace in the lab itself. I really think those minimally-intrusive disruptions are, at best, the typical inconveniences to be associated with construction, and no more intrusive than requiring students to walk across campus to some unknown building and some unknown room for an exam.

[Derek]

Oh, and sorry, I interpreted "Electronic Bluebook" to refer to the law school Bluebook Uniform System of Citation, not Bluebook as in bound lined paper. From its Web site, I'm skeptical....

[Derek]

Also, I should add that, as I understand it, a construction project isn't performed by a single contractor. According to a faculty member I contacted regarding this, if they postpone the jackhammering for a week, the entire project would be postponed by three months on account of the timeline for the next contractors in line. This, in effect, would delay the new building by a full semester. Accordingly, I would seriously consider these implications before further (uninformed) complaining occurs in this space.

[Brendan Loy]

If Derek's information is correct, I retract my earlier vituperations, and am glad I sent the version of the e-mail that I sent, rather than the earlier draft. :)

[Wobbly H]

Derek,
Of course this is a fair and well-reasoned point. But to his credit, Brenners is considering your potential implications, by sending the e-mail asking for more information. Now, you might argue that the toothpaste is already out of the tube on this one, as criticism has already occurred on this blog without the requisite knowledge, and that would be fair. But let's give Papa Brenners a little bit of credit.

[Brendan Loy]

(I do, however, think that if nothing else, the administration can and should be faulted for terrible communication. The e-mail from Dean O'Hara -- which I read in its entirety -- says nothing about the three-month delay Derek mentioned, and I gather that information has not been widely disseminated among students in any other way. It certainly should have been, if true. The students deserve an explanation for why they're being so grossly inconvenienced -- and if you give them one, and it's a good one, they might just understand what's going on, and realize that the administration actually isn't disregarding their needs, but has very good reasons for its decisions. It's head-smackingly stupid not to fully explain the good reasons behind their decision-making process, if indeed they have good reasons.

[Derek]

Why would they need an explanation for "if we postpone this project, it'll take longer to build the building"? Isn't that just common sense, length of the delay regardless? I really don't get the problem. The simplistic "solutions" promulgated by the uninformed really ought not "deserve" any attention.

That is, this isn't a case where someone's asked the administration for an answer and hasn't received one or has been stonewalled. Rather, it's where individuals have come up with a simplistic conclusion ("Delay construction a week!") and demand an answer. Perhaps requesting an explanation in the first place would be preferred.

[Derek]

Though, Brendan, I should add, charitably, that I agree that "lack of communication" is often a problem among all levels of administration, whether prudently, poorly, or ignorantly intentional.

[Brendan Loy]

Derek, it's "common sense" that if we delay the project a week, it'll take a week longer. It isn't "common sense" that if we delay the project a week, it'll take three months longer. Considering the emphasis you put on that very point, I'd think you would understand the difference.

To me, and I would imagine to many exam-takers, one week's delay seems perfectly reasonable and worth it, whereas three month's delay does not.

[NDLS 07]

Note to law students: when you are working on a project as an attorney, your phone doesn't suddenly go silent, your emails don't stop coming in, and the partners don't stop asking you to complete other tasks.

As far as I'm concerned, taking an exam with the construction noise would be good introduction to "the real world." As long as it impacts everyone in the same way, I say who cares. Get some earplugs and suck it up.

Of course, I was one of the folks that never got terribly worked up about anything in law school, so I may be missing the point entirely. :->

[Lisa]

I have a real problem with the answer of "If we delay this jackhammering a week, the whole building will be delayed three months." This entire project is being operated on a schedule that was certainly set up long before the construction even began. As Derek mentioned, Christmas and New Year's are coming up, and certainly the schedule was planned to give workers time off for these holidays. However, when making up the schedule, finals week should have been taken into consideration. It should have been planned that no work would be done during that week that would be more disruptive than usual (in this case, ridiculously more disruptive). That was a break down of communication between the construction company and the administration (John Affleck-Graves specifically).

The University has the power and money to make things happen on and around that campus. They pay the ethanol plant to shut down on parent weekends. They replanted all the trees on South Quad in a matter of hours a few years ago. When they want something done, it gets done. If the University wanted to, they could pay people overtime or make other arrangements to assure that the building gets completed on time. I honestly cannot see how delaying jackhammering for one week (which shouldn't have to be delayed, because it should have been planned for another time in the first place) will postpone the completion of the building for three months. It sounds to me like someone did a piss poor job of planning, and now that is the excuse they are handing out.

[David K.]

Isn't it a rule somewhere that in order for a college to be accredited they have to be constantly doing construction work somewhere on campus?

[Lisa]

Hahaha...I think you're right David.

[Derek]

Lisa, I'm not so sure the schedule was necessarily "created" that way (though I speak from limited knowledge). For instance, let's say the "next stage" of the project was set to begin as of December 20. The jackhammering was simply a part of an "earlier stage," which the workers, in their ignorance of the ND schedule, put this week. Alternatively, weather did not allow them to do it. And so on. I don't think the administration necessarily looked at the timetable of contractors, saw a project phase that carried through, say, Oct-Dec, and asked, "Excuse me, will only quiet construction work occur December 14-21?" In reality, this component of this phase was uncontrollable by the NDLS administration.

[Dave]

Folks here are pissed about the construction decision... but not too pissed. It doesn't even begin to compare to the craziness surrounding the Patty O this time last year. Which, if you think about it, is kind of funny - regardless of what side you were on, that issue disrupted many fewer lives than this one does.

It's combination of (1) a little bit more level-headedness among the students, (2) a little bit more transparency from the administration, and (3) a general sense of optimism that the new building is actually going to get done. The administration threw us a huge bone earlier this year when it said the construction schedule had moved up, and the completion date bumped to January 2009. I think maybe this is a reasonable price to pay for that.

(At least we don't have to move out of our offices and into library cubicles, like a number of professors are going to have to do!)

A couple more points to the administration for the simple fact that Dean O'Hara is the one disseminating this bad news, and (given the tone and verbosity) it sounds like she actually penned the letter. If this had happened last year, the task would have been delegated to Dean Peshel or Peter. While we should perhaps be able to expect this kind of accountability from our leaders, I think this is definitely a step in the right direction from last year. Baby steps...

As for the new exam software, it looks pretty good. Definitely an improvement over SecurExam. While the website might make it look a little amateurish, the developer of the program is a single operator. Dan Manier was able to work with him to tailor the program to our needs, and it's very user friendly. I'm looking forward to using it.

[Condor]

How many ND law students does it take to screw in a light bulb?

All of the students to hold the light bulb, a quarter of them shouting orders to South Bend's working class to drop their tools and start revolving around them, and the other fourth bitching about why the Dean hasn't directed them already.

[Becky]

You know, I can't say that I have intimate knowledge of ND's contractors, but in my experience, a bit of money can go a long way toward persuading a contractor to manipulate their schedule to accommodate the needs of the entity holding the purse. And frankly, Derek, the concept that delaying any portion of the construction for one week would result in a catastrophic 3-month delay doesn't pass the sniff test. If it smells like bull shit, it probably is.

I have a lot of sympathy for the students trying to take their exams with all this unnecessary drama as a background distraction. The administration certainly might have chosen to inform students of the construction conflicts a bit earlier.

This is flat out poor leadership and planning on behalf of the administration in regards to their responsibility to their students. They have a duty to anticipate problems and correct them and frankly, the solutions discussed in the above post seem like they were thrown together by a bunch of incompetent teenagers at the last minute. It's certainly not the quality of a response that you would anticipate from the administration of a decent school.

[Mark]

Holy crap.

Grow up and learn how to focus.

Focus on the exams not on where you are taking them or where you have to study.

You are going to be lawyers working in the real world. I feel sorry for the profession.

Tell your boss that you want a bigger desk and a bigger room to do research in. You need a better computer and you need to do your research on line not out of books. Don't cry too much when they laugh in your face.

[Becky]

I see Mark. It's too much to expect competence from the administration. To me, this is the equivalent of buying a car and having the wheels fall off the second day you have it. To follow your absurd logic, I most certainly would not simply accept the status quo, quit my bitching and ride a bike to work instead. I demand a certain quality for my money. NDLS students are consumers, not privileged attendees of a magnanimous university. They pay for an education, for a quality product delivered smoothly.

And, you know, as a matter of practicality here, I know of very few large, prestigious law firms located on the first few floors of a major building, where construction noise would pose the kind of issues we're talking about here. In all of the jobs I've held since I was 16, I've never had to deal with someone jackhammering directly outside my place of employment. In fact, the only comparable annoyance I can think of is when I was living in LA and someone's car alarm went off for like 4 hours in the middle of the night in a secured parking lot next door to my building. But I wasn't trying to take an exam that has a direct, indelible impact on my future. I was just trying to sleep.

Point is, the NDLS students are a great bunch and I have no doubt that they'll be fine despite these abhorrent testing conditions. But that's really beside the point. They shouldn't have to bear the brunt of the administration's incompetence. It would be different if half the law school had suddenly fallen into a sink hole or some unexpected calamity had forced desperate measures. That doesn't seem to be the case here.

And uh, I don't understand how the law school can possibly allow students to switch locations during the course of an exam. How do you prevent cheating in that case?

[Derek]

I'm going to try to explain how construction subcontractors work in the slowest possible terms. (This is exemplary; there are numerous alternative scenarios under the same concept.)

Let's say this phase of construction is Phase III. The subcontractors for Phase IV agreed back in, say, March 2007 that they'd do their work starting in late December 2007. Of course, Phase IV subcontractors have other work to do: they've got projects in mid-January, mid-February, and mid-March, all on other construction contracts.

If the Phase III work is postponed a week, the Phase IV subcontractors come back and say, "Uh uh, you didn't get done in time, and we're not postponing three other jobs because of your screw-up. You can wait until we have an opening." That opening would be, well, three months later.

Subcontracting is a jigsaw puzzle. If one portion of one project runs a week (actually, in this case, a week and a half) behind, it can dramatically alter the schedule for subsequent subcontractors. (Indeed, who knows when the Phase V, Phase VI, and Phase VII subcontractors could work on the new schedule.)

I'll use an analogy. Let's say you need a kidney transplant, and you're scheduled for surgery next week. If you call and say you can't make it, but you'd like them to postpone it until the following week, the doctor will laugh. You'll be placed at the bottom of the list again, or wherever the next opening is.

Additionally, the concept that the construction crew provided the school with a list of "decible levels" of work well in advance is also silly. It's not like back in May they said, "Okay, here's our schedule... yada yada yada... Jackhammering, December 14-21..." As with any construction project, they might come in and warn the school a few days in advance when the loud work is going to occur so that earplugs and accommodations are made. And the school is accommodating as best they can. Communication may not be ideal, but accommodation certainly seems accounted for.

[Brendan]

Cheating? Puh. Like law students would ever cheat. Ain't you ever heard of the Honor Code? ;) You know, the Code that makes it OK to have closed-book take-home finals, but for some reason doesn't prevent us from having to use unnecessarily complicated software like SecurExam and Electronic Bluebook? ...

Anyway, if there's an argument more tired than the one that goes, "WAAAAH, law students are such whiners, they should just shut up," I don't know what it is. Every single time there's an NDLS controversy on this blog, someone swoops in to argue that the students are being spoiled brats about it, and they need to grow up. The same thing happened when there was a controversy at Baylor Law School a few years back, that my friend Chris blogged about extensively. The students got righteously outraged about some administrative bungling, and there was a massive backlash along the lines of, "You guys are being such babies." To the people who make this argument, the facts of the situation don't matter -- the only thing that matters is that it's law students (i.e., future lawyers) who are complaining, so their complaints must lack merit. Well, guess what, just because the issues that impact students' lives might seem petty to an outsider who doesn't have to deal with them, doesn't mean they aren't serious issues to the people whose lives and careers are directly impacted. Nobody is claiming that this is some great injustice in the grand scheme of things, on par with the plight of AIDS orphans in Africa or Falun Gong members in China. But that doesn't mean it doesn't suck, and people aren't required to not complain about the things that negatively impact their lives just because there are other things in the world that are far worse. And don't even get me started on the variants of the "life isn't fair" argument -- life may not be fair, but when a particular person or entity has the ability to make things more fair (or more palatable, more reasonable, more comfortable, etc.) and chooses not to for no good reason, or for an inadequate reason, or due to a lack of planning or empathy or foresight, and especially when they then fail to explain why they're arbitrarily making life more difficult than it ought to be, the people negatively impacted have every right to complain, and the response "it's a tough old world, deal with it" is complete and utter bullshit. It's one thing to recognize that life will sometimes inevitably be annoying and difficult and unfair; it's another thing entirely to conclude that, therefore, you have no right to be annoyed or to complain when people with direct control over a particular situation disregard your concerns and make things unnecessarily more difficult than they need to be.

Anyway, the idea that it's a good idea to subject law students to construction noise and schedule disruptions during finals (during, for the 1Ls, their first ever law-school finals -- and for those of us who went to law school, let's take a moment and try to remember just how stressful and overwhelming those seemed at the time) is completely ludicrous. Law-school exams are not supposed to test students on their ability to deal with noise and disruption. They're supposed to test students on their knowledge of the law and their critical thinking abilities. So while I respect Derek's points about the genuine cost-benefit issues with relation to the construction schedule, all these other arguments are just nonsense.

[Brendan]

Derek, what you say makes sense. However, I still think the administration should have had some foresight here, and made it a priority from Day One to tell the contractors that they need to be sure they aren't doing extremely noisy work during the exam period. This could have communicated months ago, so that the contractors would be able to work around that in their schedule. It's not like the exam schedule was a mystery, and it's not like there's any other time of year when it's anywhere near as important for the noise/vibration level to be reasonable. It's also not like we're talking about a month-long period of time. Admittedly I'm no construction expert, I have to believe that the various phases of the work (within a single subcontractor's portion of the job) could have been reshuffled with adequate notice.

It just seems like there was no thought given whatsoever to the impact of the construction schedule on the students, until it was too late to do anything about it except for these bizarre and uniquely disruptive patchwork measures. That's poor planning, plain and simple. It does seem like they're making the best of a bad situation now, but I have to believe that the bad situation could and should have been avoided, or at least substantially mitigated.

My initial outrage was overstated, but I still think the situation sucks and I don't believe the administration should get the free pass that you want to give them.

[Brian Foster]

Brendan,

Just curious -- did you get a response to your inquiring email, or (as "It just seems like" and "It does seem like" and "I have to believe that" suggest) are you absconding from your earlier commitment not to go off "half-cocked"?

Based on what I've seen here, it appears Derek has gotten information from the school, which is what enables him to "make[] sense," whereas you appear to have abandoned your earlier facade of caution and have resumed tossing about conclusory reprimands such as "there was no thought given whatsoever to the impact of the construction schedule on the students," "that's poor planning, plain and simple," and "the bad situation could and should have been avoided, or at least substantially mitigated."

The truth is you have no factual basis for any of these assertions -- at least none that you've established here. (And given your frequent willingness to embarrass NDLS in this forum, I can't imagine you'd hold back any email confirmation that your conclusions are accurate.) As a faculty member recently told me in reference to an entirely unrelated incident, "not everything your alma mater does is the product of incompetence or idiocy."

Particularly given that the only participant in this thread who appears to actually be a current student has assured us that students, while "pissed," are "not too pissed" and may well consider this a "reasonable price to pay" for completion of the building by January 2009, perhaps the wisest course here would be to let those actually affected decide whether, and to what extent, they want to fight this battle, and otherwise to keep our own opinions to ourselves.

[Brendan Loy]

Brian,

Stay tuned. I will have a new post on this matter shortly, which I think you will be pleased with.

[Becky]

Brian, I can't help but think that you're in a pot-kettle situation in your comment. Without any knowledge of what Brendan has done to investigate the administrative response, you've assumed that he has no "factual basis" for his assertions and you go on to assert that he's actually being entirely irresponsible and firing from the hip because he has no qualms about embarassing the law school.

You're kind of a hypocritical dickhead, eh?

If misinformed opinions bother you so much, perhaps you should have taken the time to ask Brendan what, if anything, he'd done to contact the administration before firing off a hasty comment. But then, you have no problem embarassing Brendan in this forum without adequate information to make a sound judgement. Perhaps your wisest course of action would be to keep your assumptions to yourself.

[Becky]

Derek, I suppose I might concede your point about the contractors seeing as how South Bend is a small place and they probably only have one set of jackhammer blokes to do this kind of work, making it tricksy to hire an alternate crew. But it still sucks for the students. And in fairness, I suppose it sucks for the administrators who have to deal with it sucking for the students.

It's like this one week a year at USC when they put the fertilizer down for the flowers. You know that you'll be able to appreciate beautiful flowers at some future date, but for an entire week, the entire campus smells like bung and everyone bitches about it.

I'm super happy that the construction started after Brendan graduated. The 1Ls this year are getting a raw deal--three years of construction. The place should be gorgeous...right after they graduate. Though even with the construction, I'd imagine the school still retains some of its majesty.

[Becky]

Man, it would be awesome if there was some kind of major winter storm that hit South Bend and delayed the construction anyway. All this bloviating for nothing!

[Brendan Loy]

Actually, since the construction is now slated to be completed in January 2009, the 1Ls will get to spend half of their law-school careers in the new building. Arguably the current 2Ls get the rawest deal, since they'll only be in the building for their last semester of 3L year, and everybody knows 3Ls don't actually go to class anyway. :)

Anyway, Becky, I think you're being a bit harsh with Brian. While it's true that he didn't check with me about the basis of my ruminations, it's also true that his assumptions were essentially correct as of the time he made them. I have since spoken with someone at NDLS, as will be reflected in my new post when I am able to post it (again, stay tuned), but at the time that I wrote the comments Brian was quoting, I had not. Moreover, Brian is correct that I jumped to some conclusions that I should not have; my new post will address that, too, which is why I mentioned in my response to Brian that "I think [he] will be pleased with" said post.

I appreciate your sticking up for me, and I suppose I could parse Brian's comment and take issue with a phrase here or a word there, but frankly, I'm in full retreat mode on this issue, so I'm just going to put my tail between my legs and concede the field, and live to fight another day. :) Brian and Derek, you were right and I was wrong, tra la la la la. Again, stay tuned for my new post, which will appear as soon as I am able to post it...

[Brian Foster]

Brendan:

I eagerly await the new post. Thanks for keeping us all informed.

Becky:

I qualified my charge with "at least none that you've established here." Apparently there are imminent plans to establish something. That seems less pot-kettle on my end, and more cart-horse on Brendan's end. But there's little point quibbling over the appropriate cliche.

I didn't need to ask Brendan "what, if anything, he'd done to contact the administration before firing off a hasty comment," because he already told us, above. I merely questioned whether his response, written in terms that strongly suggested he had no new information yet echoing (albeit in less stringent language) the same conclusions he had originally made and subsequently backed away from, was in accord with his previous commitment to act responsibly on this matter.

To the extent I "embarrassed" Brendan at all, an effect which I highly doubt I had, I suggest that as the proprietor of this site who employs an extremely tolerant-liberal standard for comments, he has put himself out there as a psuedo-public figure and left himself open to precisely that possibility whenever it may be warranted. If Brendan opens himself up to potential embarrassment, and subsequently is embarrassed, the fault lies with Brendan, not with he who effects the embarrassment.

I have made no assumptions here. I have simply challenged the all-too-common knee-jerk assumption that whenever NDLS does something less than perfect, incompetency and idiocy are to blame.

[Brian Foster]

I started writing 2:24 well before 2:20, hence the apparent (well, actual) ignorance of Brendan's 2:20 comment.

Bygones. :)

[Brendan]

This has nothing, really, to do with the matter at hand, but I just want to briefly respond to this:

To the extent I "embarrassed" Brendan at all, an effect which I highly doubt I had, I suggest that as the proprietor of this site who employs an extremely tolerant-liberal standard for comments, he has put himself out there as a psuedo-public figure and left himself open to precisely that possibility whenever it may be warranted. If Brendan opens himself up to potential embarrassment, and subsequently is embarrassed, the fault lies with Brendan, not with he who effects the embarrassment.

I agree with this statement, provided -- and I'm sure you would agree with this, Brian -- that the "whenever it may be warranted" is interpreted in such a way that I am not seen as "open[ing] [my]self up to potential embarrassment" with relation to non-substantitve, personal issues -- e.g. anonymous trolls making comments about my personal life, my employment history, and so forth. In other words, the mere fact that I have a blog, and that I sometimes talk about my wife and (soon) kid and, in extremely general terms, about my career, is not some sort of moral license for people to come in here and throw dirt personally with relation to those things... and if people do in fact do that, which of course some inevitably will, I am perfectly within my rights to be offended and upset and, when necessary, to delete comments and even ban commenters... and it's no defense for them to say, "well, you opened yourself up to it by having a blog." That's true in the sense that I took the risk that trolls will say nasty things, but not in the sense that it somehow justifies the trolls' conduct.

The reason I say all this is because the argument that "you open yourself up to this sort of thing by having a blog" has been used in the past by some of the site's more vicious trolls as a justification for their inappropriate behavior, and I just want to be clear about separating that unworthy argument from the far different and far worthier argument that, when I raise a substantive issue on the blog, I am of course opening myself up to criticism of my opinion about that issue, my manner of expressing my opinion, my reasoning, my sourcing, etc.

[Brian Foster]

Of course, yes, I agree with that distinction in full, as I believe we have discussed elsewhere . . . or maybe we just intended to discuss it and never actually got around to it, once or twice. :)

But yes, definitely. I meant that it would be your fault only in the sense that, on the substantive matter at hand, you took a position that then turned out to be indefensible or embarrassing or wrong or whatever.

Although -- not to take a tangent off the tangent, but would you in turn agree, Brendan, that if someone wanted to start up "brendanloyisaworthlesstool.com" or something similar, and devote the entire site to precisely the personal attacks and epithets that we agree you have no obligation to tolerate here, you would have a much harder time establishing a cause of action against that person based on your kinda-sorta "public figure" status, than a purely private figure would if the same person started "privatefigurewhodoesn'thaveablogandneverdoesanythingtoholdhimselfoutanddrawattentiontohimselfisaworthlesstool.com" ?

I'm not sure I agree with that, but I'm not sure I disagree either. So I'm curious.

[Brian Foster]

Aw, my URL got cut off. :)

With spaces, it was:

Private Figure Who Doesn't Have A Blog And Never Does Anything To Hold Himself Out And Draw Attention To Himself Is A Worthless Tool Dot Com

Great, now I think I might need to go out and register "brendanloyisaworthlesstool.com," just to prevent someone else from registering it... thanks Brian. ;)

Anyway, um, I actually don't know the answer to your question. Well, okay, yes I do. As you phrased it, the answer is clearly "yes" -- I would have a harder time; opposing counsel would have stronger arguments than if I were a totally private figure. Whether they would ultimately win the argument, I'm not sure, but that's not what you asked. So, yes. :)

[Becky]

You know, this logic is tortured to me:

"If Brendan opens himself up to potential embarrassment, and subsequently is embarrassed, the fault lies with Brendan, not with he who effects the embarrassment."

It seems like you're abdicating any responsibility to act cordially or kindly just for the sake of being a decent person...like if there's blood in the water, you'll go for it without regard to the sensibilities of others involved. I do the same thing, but it's not personally my favorite character trait.

If past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, I'm not certain that it's entirely unfair for people to assume a bit of incompetence on the the NDLS administration's behalf. They dug themselves into a bit of a hole in that regard and I do think that they have to meet a higher standard of competence for at least a little while before I'm willing to easily give them the benefit of the doubt.

[Brian Foster]

Becky,

I think the more nuanced exchange between Brendan and me on this point ought to allay your concerns. Whether it actually will or not, I of course cannot say.

[domerlawyer]

Becky, I'd say "hypocritical douchebag" is an excellent term for Brian. Or perhaps he'd still like to be called "thea."

[Brian Foster]

domerlawyer,

How have I offended thee, friend?

I invite you to elaborate more fully. Here, if you choose, or else in private email correspondence.

(fosterbr at gmail)

I look forward to your thoughts.

[domerlawyer]

Nah. Vague bashing and dredging up reminders of past poor judgment in fora where I can be totally anonymous is really more my style.

[Brian Foster]

Too bad. I just tried emailing you at the address you included in your post on the retraction thread. Fake, as it turned out.

If you ever change your mind, please do drop me a line. I remain curious as to what your problem with me might be.