If the Bible Is Right, The World Will Explode
Big news day in the law school universe as the yearly law school rankings from U.S. News & World Report were finally officially revealed. Overall, the mood is pretty somber (translation: peeved) at Baylor Law as the school's overall ranking fell 10 spots. On the brighter side, though, the school's trial advocacy program continued to rise in the rankings up to the #7 spot nationally.
#7 is great and all, but here's my question: If the professors here at Baylor Law freely acknowledge that P.C. is the pedagogical equivalent of waterboarding, what in the world are they doing at Stetson, the #1 school in this year's trial advocacy rankings?
(Redacted)[read: Stetson Law professors] used the waterboarding technique on (Redacted)[read: Stetson Law students] 183 times...
This just in, folks: Beginning in the fall of 2009, Baylor Law students will now have to go through P.C. 183 TIMES to fulfill their graduation requirements. Good luck, kiddos.Labels: Baylor Law, U.S. News and World Report
posted by Justin @ 4/23/2009 08:21:00 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Peeved? I don't see that. I think people liked the Toben memo. He has a plan to make advocacy teams better, and that will make our overall ranking better. He knows how these things work.
Anon. 9:40,
I'll agree with you that the message from Dean Toben was a good response to the release of this year's rankings.
It's also entirely possible that we've talked to different people who might have had significantly different takes on Baylor Law's place on this year's list.
Thanks for your thoughts.
"I think people liked the Toben memo."
What, did you just hang out in the Dean's Suite all day? The reactions I viewed ranged from disappointed to enraged - students a week away from graduation with little to no employment prospects won't be placated by the fact that BLS has two new minority professors. Whoop-de-do.
We can cry and cry about how the rankings don't reflect how awesome we are, but like it or not, in the real world, rankings = value of our diploma, at least as far as our diploma can and will be translated into employment and money. I know I've learned a lot here and I really value my education, but if my BLS diploma just gets my resume tossed, I might as well have studied advanced tiddlywinks.
I can't even articulate a reply that isn't ranting.
Let's just say that I agree with my dear ALV. I was peeved at the rankings, but enraged at the message. It was a brush-off and a plethora of excuses and rationalizations.
anon 9:40 here. yee, don't you have your own blog for ranting. and you guys need to be glad there is someone like toben doing things for you.
Anon 9:40 obviously doesn't attend Baylor Law. One of the biggest problems with Baylor Law is the way it treats its students. We still don't have a CSO worth a hoot and the administration simply wants to brush off our concerns.
Maybe Toben should focus on fundraising and Baylor Law should hire someone else to work ONLY on topics related to rankings (e.g., faculty, publications, etc)?
Just a thought!
@Anon 9:40
I don't know where you were when student were reading the memo, or who those students were, but here are a few things to consider:
(1) If they were newer students, they weren't around for last year's drop, so they might not know that the response from the second floor is meaningless.
(b) Hiring more professors and patting ourselves on the back because they are "womeon of color" does nothing for the educational value of the school if the professors can't teach and are not respected authors in their fields. At least one of those women cannot answer a question and has no true grasp of her subject matter (although it was reassuring to see she had been reading Examples and Explanations for her area of study). I wonder how many qualified candidates we had to jump over to chase the elusive dream of a more integrated Baylor. Diversity is a factor that goes into rankings, but if those professors are not respected in their field and publishing in their field and providing their students a great education, you're wasting your, no MY, money.
(c) As a piggy-back to (b) great, we're hiring more professors so that they "can" continue to do what they have always been able to do if they wanted - write and talk. Bravo. How about requiring that they research and write a certain amount. *Gasp* Oh, wait, that might foster more relationships with actual students and require interaction with the scary world outside of Baylor.
(d) Last year, the CSO kept talking about extending its network to Dallas, Houston, and even Austin. All third years who saw the list for OCI can tell you that the opposite seems to be occuring. At least in the past we could talk about bar passage rates when we as students tried (and succeeded in) creating a better, bigger network than the CSO.
(e) Teaching a few sparkley people to better argue a case that is prepared (researched, strategized, etc.) for them is great. Requiring everyone to go through a litigation class (three) is fine and dandy. But, the class should be a second year class because employers want 2Ls who have taken evidence (never mind that it might threaten Powell's power - he's a good professor and will understand it if someone actually does the research - I actually think the other professors are the ones who feel threatened). Also, that is only one area of law school, so we should probably worry about Rome burning rather than how pretty the roses are this year.
As for your comment to Yee, congratulations on being internet literate enough to know she has a blog. You too could create a blog where you could rant. However, all three of us chose to use the comment feature here to engage in the discussion.
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