Today I taught the last session of a course I created about 7 years ago for undergraduates. It had the entirely vague title, “Introduction to Law,” and had to be taught by law faculty back when our undergraduate law major was affiliated with the ABA.
I am sad.
It really was my baby. I had a vague description of what the class should cover and everything else was up to me. I created the curriculum, chose the textbook, determined the assessments, and set the general order of the class. Sure, other law faculty had taught second or third sections of the course over the years. I happily shared all my materials, syllabus, in-class exercises, and assessments with them. Frequently a member of the undergraduate law faculty would teach an “honors” version of the class. I have no idea what they did differently-in fact, I have no idea what they did at all-because none of them ever contacted me to ask.
This course survived being new, being tweaked, and then being taught online during COVID. I had an old Bob the Builder “gavel” I used to conduct oral arguments from my kitchen table. I had my daughter pretend to be me online one April Fool’s Day (and she really nailed it except for the 30 years younger bit….). There were a few semesters after we came back in person where I shifted the usual oral argument assessment to a paper because there was just so much anxiety and I did not wish to assess mental health instead of course engagement. Small changes were driven by student feedback and the changing political world.
Alas, the department decided to disaffiliate with the ABA a couple of years ago and having law faculty teach the course became both optional and expensive (overload pay at the law school rate), so this year I was nicely told that they would be teaching the course in-house -just kidding – that was not what happened. What happened was that around the time the fall schedule was being solidified, I asked about the shared scheduling document and was told it wasn’t sent to me because I wasn’t on the schedule. I thought maybe that was an error because I was essentially an adjunct to the department, but it was not[1].
It turns out that they discontinued LawU 101 (also an ABA requirement) and renamed my class (my baby!) LawU 102. The faculty who taught 101 now are teaching 102 instead. I have never spoken to some of these folks and the “new class” description is almost completely identical. I wonder if they are using my syllabus, book, or assessments? No one has bothered to ask me any questions about the class. And (petty me) isn’t going to be proactive in engaging them either.
May the odds be ever in their favor. I’d wish them luck, but I am in mourning.
I will miss you LawU 201.
(Liz Stillman)
[1] I am fairly certain that this wasn’t intentional malevolence on the part of the department, but it certainly felt pretty awful (and not classy).
