Discourse.net

At neighboring FIU, founding Dean Leonard Strickman has announced his resignation, effective a year from now. (This is the usual heads-up to allow a school to find a replacement.) Strickman’s tenure was noted by several achievements, notably recruiting a serious faculty and steering FIU law to accreditation in the shortest possible time.

Interestingly, the announcement appears in FIU Law’s online newspaper which appears to have a thriving comments section. One of the goals of UM’s draft strategic plan is to create an online space for student-faculty and student-student interaction. Whether ours is going to be purely student-run, or have a dose of administrative intervention remains to be determined as do many questions about focus, access and comments policy. Perhaps here UM can learn from FIU’s example.

Personally, whoever rides herd on it, I hope we create a forum that is as open as possible — while having some sort of mechanism to promote civility.