ABA Accreditation and Facebook

"And (I always feel like)
(Somebody's watching me)
And I have no privacy
Whooooa-oh-oh
(I always feel like)
(Somebody's watching me)
Tell me, is it just a dream"
-"Somebody's Watching Me", Michael Jackson with Rockwell Gordy

Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the semi-regularly updated site for all things related to Un. Well, at least stuff that I find particularly interesting when I semi-regularly update this site.

Spring Break is a little more than a week away and everyone at the law school is wanting to get away from the casebooks for one glorious week. I'm sure that a large number of students will be consuming large amounts of alcohol in warm, sunny places like Mexico. Others will be spending their time sitting in front of the television and watching the college basketball spectacle called March Madness. I will try to enjoy Spring Break as much as possible.
After Spring Break, it will be time to return back to the semi-real world, as law school, at some times, seems a little too bizarre to be considered real. It's like a little stain in the space-time fabric that doesn't seem to go away after repeated washings with Chlorox and Tide and OxyClean. It also means that the ABA will be visiting KU Law to evaluate whether or not the school will receive accreditation.
For those who do not know much about law school accreditation, the American Bar Association(ABA) has a website that explains the process. Basically, the ABA sends a site inspection team. This team visits the law school, looks at the facilities, sits in classes, and makes sure that certain ABA standards are met. Just the normal stuff that would be important in having a decent law school. It's a once-every-seven-years thing that the ABA does. It's extremely rare for a law school to lose accreditation, and even then, there is a gradation. One gets put on probation and if enough changes aren't made, then the school loses it.

In order to prepare for the ABA people, the administration and professors have politely asked students to be extra-prepared for classes and to pay attention. This means trying NOT TO DO certain activities. The following is an including, but not limited to "try not to do this while the ABA is here" list:
1. Sending Instant Messages
2. Writing e-mail
3. Playing computer games like Solitaire
4. Surfing online
5. Taking naps or sleeping
It looks bad if students actively engage in such activities and the ABA site committee notices them. It might mean the difference between getting accreditation or not getting accreditation. Even if the school gains accreditation, it looks bad.

I don't take a laptop to law school as I try to limit the number of distracting activities while in class at the law school, so I am not involved in these temptations. Yes, I have found that sometimes, classes can be tedious, but I trudge on and keep focused. I don't think that wireless Internet access should be turned off or limited to certain areas in the law school. Hey, if you want to use the Internet while in class, that's fine with me. It's your life and you paid to come here. If that's how you want to spend your tuition money, that's perfectly cool.
The law school has gotten heat from prospective students who claim that they were turned off from KU Law since they sat in a class and saw that students were online. This activity happens in many other law schools with wireless Internet access. I know some people at other law schools and they send e-mail and surf the web while in class. Even at the prestigous schools like Harvard Law School.

Of course, some students will find it hard to resist the temptation, especially when they're in a lecture that is steaming down the tracks to Boredom Station. They might want to go online and visit Facebook or MySpace or any other amusing site. Which brings me to this Shakespearean parody I wrote for my online novel. It's part of a chapter devoted to the Facebook phenomenom that has taken over colleges. It can be extended to the basic question of whether to go online while the ABA site team is at KU:

To Facebook or not to Facebook, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in law school to suffer
The drones and prating of terrible lectures,
Or to log on Facebook against a sea of boredom
And by web surfing end them. To nod, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The headaches and the thousand sleepy yawns
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a caffinated
Beverage to be drunk. To nod, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub...

And that's a question that many at KU Law will face. No matter what the students at KU Law do, the ABA site evaluation team is watching.

That's all for now.