KEEP YOUR HEAD AND ARMS INSIDE THE MIXER AT ALL TIMES

Following up on Rob’s post on the deteriorating situation in academia, here’s a fairly small but still symptomatic sign of the times.

Email today to CU law students, faculty, and staff:

We have heard from a number of you who have expressed concerns about the building being closed on the Saturday before finals – and we hear you. This campus-wide building closure was enacted to ensure the safety and security of our students and buildings in light of the spring football game. However, we recognize that unlike the rest of campus, we have finals starting next week. We also recognize that the short notice makes it difficult to secure alternative study spaces. 

After listening to a number of you and having some internal discussions, we have decided to grant limited access to the building between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. tomorrow. Please note that the library will remain closed, but students will have access to the second and third floors – including classrooms, common areas, and study rooms. Students will not have swipe access to the building, but rather will be given access to the building via the garden-level door facing parking lot 402. Someone from the faculty or staff will be there to open the door every thirty minutes starting at 9:00 – so please plan to arrive on the half hour, as we anticipate rainy weather. Given our concerns for student safety and building security, please observe the following rules: 

• All students entering the building must do so through the garden-level door near lot 402.
• All students entering the building must sign in and be prepared to present a photo ID.
• All students leaving the building must do so via the garden-level door near lot 402 and sign out.
• Only the on-site faculty or staff may grant access to building. PLEASE DO NOT LET STUDENTS IN THROUGH ANY OTHER DOORS.
• All students must vacate the building by 5:00 p.m. 

If you choose to take advantage of these spaces, please be respectful of other students who are also trying to study.  Sign-up sheets will be on the outside of smaller study rooms, and students and groups who sign up for those rooms may use them for up to 2 hours. All students in any given room must vacate the smaller spaces after 2 hours if another student or group has signed up to use the space. 

We are grateful to the number of thoughtful students, faculty, and staff who have – in the last 24 hours – engaged in respectful and productive conversations that have resulted in this altered approach to a difficult situation. 

Please be aware going forward, the building will be closed on all home football game days and students will not have swipe access. We are, however, willing to make exceptions when possible, if and when game days interfere with the law school’s final exam period. 

Finals start on Monday. Apparently the central administration’s decision to lock out students from all campus classroom buildings during the CU football scrimmage on Saturday afternoon — note this isn’t even an actual football game, just a glorified practice — has made some people mad. Such as law students who have finals to take who might not have a good study space at home, or who want to use the law library (which will remain locked and inaccessible), or who want to use a room for group study, and who are wondering why they are piling up in many cases six figures in non-dischargeable debt, only to discover they can’t even go to the law school because of a football practice (For what it’s worth the football facilities are clear on the other end of campus, not that that should matter).

Note too that starting this fall students won’t be able to use the law school building (this building was financed in no small part by CU students themselves, who taxed themselves via the CU student government to provide millions of dollars of funding for it) on any football Saturdays, even though they all have electronic swipe cards that are designed to give them access to the building when it’s closed to the public.

I can just imagine what discussions went on in the central administration to come up with this amazingly perverse policy, although I’m certain that the word “safety” was chanted like a mantra. What I can’t imagine is how “student safety” could possibly be implicated in any meaningful way by allowing law students to let themselves into a locked law school building while there’s a football game or scrimmage taking place a mile away.

I also have no idea if the faculty are going to be locked out of the building during the High Holy Days of Coach Prime’s Glorious Reign, since it’s now standard operating procedure to pass information on to us on a need to know basis, and needless to say we don’t need to know anything about such matters.