A notable change in the 1L curriculum is the addition of the “Legal Methods” intensive, which has been scheduled to take place from August 18-29. Some cogent concerns have been raised with regard to this change. For example, students will, at best, need to pay out for an additional two weeks of rent. Also, students will need to swallow the costs of abbreviated summer employment. Finally, students will have to give up two weeks of August to sit through, probably, the most bullshit course this faculty has ever offered. Personally, if the admin forced me to miss Burning Man and Electric Zoo just to learn about some fucknut fox that died more than 200 years ago, I would burn this building to the ground. Terms-of-Enrampagement-style.
In addition to depriving the incoming year of the few sunlit weeks they have left before they are thrown unceremoniously into the harrowing abyss that is this faculty, the Legal Methods intensive will have serious impacts on Orientation Week 2014. There are seven notable concerns:
- The curriculum changes push the beginning of school two weeks back. This means that next year’s Orientation Week Chairs will have two fewer weeks to procrastinate prepare.
- Upper Year Volunteers will be harder to come by. Most upper year students would prefer to have fun with their last weeks of summer[1], instead of having depressing conversations with what are essentially children. An actual conversation I had:
1L Student: “[Author], I did some reading ahead, and I don’t understand Admin Law.”
Me: “Fuck off. This is a pub crawl.”[2] - Legal Methods is an actual for-credit course. People will take it seriously – and fail to develop the sense of whimsy and romance necessary for dealing with faculty nonsense. Before you know it, we’ll start seeing attendance at ethics week. Compulsory moots will be taken seriously. SUYRPs will actually get written. Law Review won’t suck. Ten years later, you’re in a loveless marriage living in a shitty east-facing flat in Cabbagetown, eating pretentious organic Mac n Cheese on a Sunday night in your faded Calvin Klein pajamas, wondering for the hundredth time why the fuck she puts ketchup on hers.
- Orientation Week won’t be at the same time as TIFF. I mean, why do we even bother? What’s the point? It’s already hard convincing people that we’re a top-tier glamorous institution when we have a sink full of filthy cups in a mouse-infested kitchen and no chairs for our three computers.[3] Without the slim possibility of seeing some random celebrity on campus (likely because they got lost), we’re basically a group home.
- Orientation week may potentially need to run through the whole 2-week period. Two weeks! Listen – even if I returned the money I embezzled in 2012, there is still no way we could afford this. Breakfast would be a slice of Wonderbread and a half-cup of that dubious brown liquid they pass-off for coffee in that obnoxiously cheerful nook in the Northwest end of Old Vic. On the bright side, because the whole week is happening so early, we could save money by renting out a high school gymnasium for the semi-formal.
- We can’t make “September” by Earth Wind and Fire the theme song for O-Week anymore.
- Law School Orientation won’t run concurrently with Orientation Week for the undergraduate faculties and colleges. Picture a bunch of 1Ls in the reading room, feverishly pursuing some misguided effort to learn. As this is happening, a bunch of anaemic WASPy kids are marching about campus in Harry Potter gowns telling snooty jokes and actually getting off on the outrage their self-entitlement provokes. Meanwhile poorly-dressed goons run around in purple-face, firing off that goddamn cannon of theirs every five minutes.[4]
[Redacted for Privacy Reasons] was O-Week Chair in 2012, is a small business owner, and a cat enthusiast.
