I gave a legal ethics seminar 90 minutes after finding my wife dead, and these infants are too traumatized to take their exams because of a “horrific time on campus” and their “level of distress”:
They don’t know the meaning of the word “professionalism” (my seminar topic), and until they learn it and understand their duty to practice it as lawyers, these students, supposedly the best of Columbia’s best, are not fit to practice law.
Jonathan Turley didn’t mince words, and he has be a master word-mincer, regarding this weenie-ism, writing, “Outside of the Columbia Law Review offices is a thing called life. It is neither predictable nor comfortable. We enter the lives of our clients when they are often failing apart. We have to bring our skills and support at those moments without the assistance of a trauma tent or emotional coach. We also cannot ask judges for postponements to allow us to process the stress of the moment.” He continued, “[O]ur clients look to us for strength not fragility in such moments. The response from Columbia Law School should be simple: see you at the exams.”
Bingo. Meanwhile, the ethics dunces at the Ethics Alarms Unethical Website of the Century, Above the Law, reacted with its usual almost infallible ability to get every issue wrong while deriding the more competent analysts who got it right, writing, “As predictable as night follows day, right-wing troll outlets are already mocking Columbia law students for talking about “violence” and being “irrevocably shaken.” But beyond the smug posturing, there’s not so much a substantive counter to the arguments laid out in the letter.”
Whatever language that last sentence is supposed to be in…
Sure there’s a substantive counter; Turley made it. “Outside of the Columbia Law Review offices is a thing called life.”
Ethics Alarms 
Another piece of advice for Columbia Law students.
Do not put into writing what eould make you look stupid.
they certainly passed legalese. Five paragraphs withe complicated sentences that repeat their fundamental complaints. they indeed should have a pass/fail system with all being failed for lack of fortitude.
Nothing says mandatory like mandated pass/fail. A bit redundant.
The letter outright claims that the protesting students are innocent victims of police brutality. Just who were the white supremacist neo-fascists that stormed the campus, the police- Jewish students?
If they are going to mandate pass/fail then make the criteria to pass as being one who did not participate in the encampment, protest or ask for special dispensation because of their own behavior.
Reminds me of the story of the children who murdered their parents pleading for mercy because they are orphans.
I know this is tired and well-worn reasoning, but if schools cancel exams this year because of the rioting and (often) violent demonstrations on their campuses, what’s to prevent students from – year after year – continuing to manufacture reasons to protest and act like thugs in order to then demand cancellation of exams?
To even entertain these demands would lead me to believe that adults in these institutions haven’t figured out how children operate.
The administration agrees with these rpotesters.
No commencement was ever canceled because the Westboro Baptist Church promised to picket the ceremony.
I was enraged when U. of Missouri-Columbia cancelled the last 2 months of the semester for their ‘protests’ years ago. Many of those students were in continuation classes. That means, the next class picks up where the last one stopped. Those students missed 1/2 a semester of material and they got full credit. I realize that many of the ‘academic’ areas are so worthless that no one will notice if 1/2 a semester is missing, but there are still areas where this would be disastrous. They should have extended the school year by 2 months and finished the classes or cancelled everyone’s classes and made them start over.
Mizzou should have lost their accreditation for what they did. However, the accreditation bodies are too afraid of the big schools to hold them accountable. They bully small schools into doing illegal DEI activities with the threat of losing accreditation, but the big schools can get away with anything. Look at the UNC academics scandal.
(1) Gave students grades and credit after the semester for courses they were never even enrolled in.
(2) Allowed students to graduate with more ‘independent study’ credits that allowed by school policy.
(3) Changed students grades after the semester.
(4) Gave degrees to athletes who did not meet the graduation requirements.
The school told the NCAA that all academic standards had been upheld and it was just ‘bookkeeping’ mistakes. They told the accreditation body that ‘rogue faculty’ had undermined the academic standards of the school without the knowledge of the administration.
No accreditation body action was taken against the school.
How can you do worse than giving people credit for classes they didn’t take and degrees when they didn’t meet the degree requirement? What would a big school have to do to lose accreditation? Laws are for little people.
I was enraged when U. of Missouri-Columbia cancelled the last 2 months of the semester for their ‘protests’ years ago.
What were those protests about?
And did Jack write a post about it?
In the Kent State spring of 1970, the “student leaders” of the demonstrations (such as they were: a “march” down to town) at my college demanded finals be cancelled. The faculty and the Deans said, “No.” That was that. A University of Notre Dame graduate of the same vintage reported ten years after the fact that the ND students assembled on the main quadrangle in front of the administration (home of the golden dome) to protest the war. Father Joyce, henchman for ND President Fr. Theodore Hesburgh (the Kennedy family’s personal priest and, in my opinion the reason the US got into the Vietnam war [to save the Catholic Church in Vietnam from the Communists]), got on a microphone and announced from a balcony on the second floor of the administration building that anyone remaining on the quad after three minutes would be expelled. The Vietnam Era at Notre Dame lasted three minutes.
In both cases back then, the inmates were not running the asylum. I’ve seen a photo where about forty Columbia faculty members are locking their arms while wearing road workers’ safety vests to prevent the police from arresting the “demonstrators” on campus. Jesus H. Christ. How screwed up is that?