The law school's Helping Others through Pro Bono (H.O.P.E.) public interest resource center is having its annual auction. Bidding ends in a few hours.
It's a good cause, so I encourage you to go bargain hunting.
Interestingly, the number two most bid-up item (perhaps because there was a low reserve) is a 5 Day/4 Night Escape to Cancun, Mexico. This despite the fact that Mexico has been much in the news lately….
I don't usually gripe here about my employer. That isn't because I lead a life with absolutely nothing to gripe about, nor is it due to a saintly disposition. Rather, it's a self-imposed time, place, and manner restriction.
But someone at the University of Miami School of Law has done something which annoys me.
And it annoys me pretty much every day I come to work.
So I am going to vent about it here.
Some bright spark in the law school — or maybe in the University, this could be a campus-wide phenomenon for all I know — has had the really wonderful idea of putting hideous signs in all the men's rooms. (And, again for all I know, putting them in the ladies' rooms too. I haven't investigated.)
They over-use capitalization; I know, that war was lost long ago.
These signs are green. UM green. It's not my favorite color, so that's a bad start. But lots of things are green in life, including plants and trees. And I like plants and trees. (So long as they're outside. And I don't have to hike around them. But I digress.)
These signs are ugly. But that's not what really bugs me. I could live with ugly. Lots of signs are ugly. (Especially green signs.)
But these signs are smarmy. And they are strategically located where you cannot avoid looking at them.
They are, in fact, creepy in their smarmyness.
The message may seem inoffensive:
“Please Show
Courtesy to
Others By Helping
Us Keep Our
Bathroom Clean”
and indeed I don't have anything against the message. Except the capitalization. And the odd linebreaks. And did I mention they are green? And — worse — did they have to throw in quote marks for no good reason? Who is being quoted here?
But (try to) forget all that, the real problem here is the illustration. It's so horrible I've placed it in the continuation section of this blog post so that I won't have to look at it on my homepage.
There is no need for you to click on this thing. If you do, don't blame me. I warned you.
This seems sensible:
Student Government’s Police Advisory Board invites members of the UM community to participate in a survey regarding the possibility of a designated late-night (12 to 3 a.m.) jogging route. The route could include extra lighting, security patrols, camera coverage, and other safety features. The board seeks to learn if the University community would be interested in having this available on campus. The survey is completely anonymous, and additional free-response comments or ideas are welcome. Click here to complete the survey.
(via e-veritas)
I hadn't realized that one of the members of the Pulitzer-prize winning team from the Detroit Free Press is a graduate of the University of Miami School of Law.
David Zeman, 50, is the paper’s assistant managing editor for investigations, having previously worked as an investigative and legal reporter at the paper. He is a 1981 graduate of the University of North Carolina and a 1984 graduate of the University of Miami Law School. He received a master’s degree in 1987 from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Zeman previously worked at the Miami Herald and the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C.
The team, which included two reporters, won for uncovering the Kwame Kilpatrick scandal.
The following applies to UM Law Students Only. Sorry about that.
I would like to hire a current 1L or 2L to be a part-time summer research assistant. If things work out, the job could be extended into next year by mutual consent.
The hours are negotiable, but likely would be in the 10-20 hours per week range. I would strongly prefer if you could start very soon after exams finish. If you wanted to, however, you could take a break at some time in the summer, ideally in mid or late July.
I'm looking for someone who can write clearly, is well-organized, and who is really good at finding things in libraries and on the Internet.
If you happen to have some web or programming skills (some or all of HTML, WordPress, MySQL, Perl, Debian), that would be a very big plus but it is not in any way a requirement.
The hourly pay is set by the university, and is not as high as you deserve, but the work is sometimes interesting.
If this sounds like it might be attractive, please e-mail me the following with the words RESEARCH ASSISTANT (in all caps) in the subject line (or, if you must, bring a dead tree copy to me in Rm. 382):
News has it that a new magazine ranking puts the University of Miami at #1 at something.
We can now claim (once again — remember “Suntan U”) to be the top-ranked Playboy Party School. What joy. I expect this will be prominently featured in future law school recruiting materials, along with our long-time recruiting video. It sure gets a lot of media.
The categories are scored on a “scientific” 20-point scale, and whatever combination of entrails and calculators were used UM ended up with very high scores:
| Bikini |
20 |
| Sex | 17 |
| Campus | 20 |
| Sports | 12 |
| Brains | 20 |
| Total | 89 |
*-Apparently this includes, among other things, the number of days of sunshine in a year, and the number of tanning salons and cosmetic surgeons near campus. Talk about stacking the deck for South Florida.
But only 12 for “Sports”? That seems very low…
Admittedly, if one's going to do well in absurd ratings systems, this wouldn't exactly have been one of my top 100 choices. And it's hard to put much faith in a publication that still calls female college students “coeds,” but then again it does say it is “scientific,” so this has to be on a par with US News.
In any event, we here in the law school will be celebrating this achievement in an appropriate manner: next week we will begin administering exams.
But seriously, whatever is going on next door in the college, students just attend U.Miami Law for the articles…
Jotwell Blenderlaw