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How about an ethics course for the administration?

I think most of you know I'm not the type of N&B blogger who typically rails against the administration. Actually, considering this is my first post since Lockergate, maybe I am that kind of blogger. But those who know me personally know I rarely whine. I hate whining. It's why I can't stand bands like Snow Patrol and Coldplay. But, in this case, I'll have to make an exception. Sing along, Chris Martin.

We received an e-mail from the admin last week about the "Professional Responsibility" requirement. Apparently, unbeknownst to most of us (and flat out denied by many), we have to take one of these courses by the end of 2L. The problem? Only one such course (Law 210.14 Legal Ethics: Regulation of Lawyers) is being offered next semester. Want to guess the enrollment cap on that course? I'll give you a minute.

. . .

Nope, lower.

. . .

Still lower.

. . .

Lower! Think digits on one hand.

Yep, good guessing. It's five. FIVE! Five lucky people can enroll in this course. The rest of us will have to do a clinic or submit an Academic Rules Petition. I have no idea how those petitions work or their likelihood of approval. Why? Because the administration didn't tell us that. Which really seems to be a trend.

Now I know this requirement was apparently published in the rules somewhere (as copied in the e-mail). But, seriously, am I expected to know those by heart? And clearly the admin was aware that 3Ls had been telling us not to worry about it. A reminder e-mail before now would have been nice. So would a few more courses that meet the requirement. In lieu of those things, I expect a flood of "Academic Rules Petitions" will be filed shortly. Hopefully they'll be approved, but it'd be nicer if something more rational was done about this.

BHSA did such a pretty solid job with the locker situation. Maybe they can step up again on this?

I find the whole thing unnecessarily annoying. You know, "nobody said it was easy, but no one ever said it would be this hard." Well said, Chris. Whine on.

UPDATE: Since posting this, I've found this, which shows the enrollment cap as 60. I was originally going off of this, which (probably erroneously) has it at 5. 60 is still pretty low for a class that most 2Ls (and probably a lot of 3Ls) will need next semester.

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on October 20, 2008 (boomark / email).