Archive for "student orgs"
Student Organizations Fair Kicks Off Events Calendar
On Thursday, Brooklyn Law School held its annual Student Organizations Fair. Students gathered in the courtyard and took full advantage of the weather, the free food, and the opportunity to meet student leaders face to face and learn about what their organizations do. Numerous membership organizations spanning a diverse range of legal and cultural interests were present, from Art Law to Environmental Law to the Irish Law Students Association. Notable new organizations included BLS Students to Reelect Obama, the Brooklyn Law Immigration Society, and BLS Students for Sensible Drug Policy.
Several pro bono projects were also present. Pro bono projects offer students the opportunity to work first-hand on legal issues and provide critical advice and support to people who otherwise may not be able to obtain it. For example, students participating in Motivating Youth Through Legal Education (MYLE) help high-school students from disadvantaged backgrounds prepare for national debate competitions on Constitutional Law. Similarly, the Suspension Representation Project (SRP) helps students fight their suspensions in a hearing before an administrative judge. For more on pro bono groups and other public service opportunities, see http://apps.americanbar.org/
For those who did not attend the fair, a full list of school organizations and their contact information can be found on the BLS Web site. If you are interested in an organization or a pro bono project, send its student contact an e-mail to receive more information and be added to its mailing list.
Additionally, in order to help BLS students stay up to date with the numerous opportunities that school organizations provide, The Advocate now features the SBA calendar on our main page. Look for future events that are currently posted and check back frequently for new additions.
Alexander Goldman also contributed to this article.
Tips for Running Your Student Organization…Into the Ground
The BLS Film Society
Not all student organizations are meant to succeed. Some are never meant to be started at all. Yet they proliferate at colleges and graduate schools around the world, most likely because the founders want a couple more lines of throat-clearing nonsense to fill up space on their resumes. Let me say this: if some poor sod hires you because you were the Vice Treasurer for the Bluegrass and the Law Club, you better wear a hardhat to protect yourself from that business or institution collapsing around you.
Brooklyn Law School, to be sure, boasts a variety of well-run, well-intentioned student organizations. BLSPI, among other noble deeds, provides one of the choicest spectacles of the academic year: the site of law students spastically flinging their arms in the air before one of 20 BarBri tuition coupons reach fifteen hundred dollars at the BLSPI auction. The ACLU and the Federalist Society host thought-provoking debates on almost painfully relevant topics. Organizations like these do things such as hold regular meetings, assign their executive board duties, and send several e-mails per week to those present on their listserv. I am sure the Brooklyn Law School Class of 2010 is equipped with more knowledge than they can handle about the massive amount of Thursday-night debauching their successors are engaging in at local watering holes.
This article is not for those organizations. This is instead a missive – a pamphlet if you will – for how to run a student organization operating on the very precipice of dignity. Those organizations that wondered how they ever passed the rigorous vetting process of the Student Bar Association.
1. “Co-Sponsor” Events with Other, More Responsible Organizations
It’s April, and you are slurping on another repulsive cup of street coffee. As you reach the lumpy chunks of congealed instant coffee grounds at the bottom of your cup, it strikes you: “Oh boy, I am the co-chair of a student organization! And we have neglected to hold a single event! Oh, the humanity!”
Don’t panic. There are other student organizations that are holding events, and they want you to co-sponsor their event with them. Why? Because it looks way cooler that way.
You must act quickly, for time is ticking away. Scan BLSConnect for any random event you observe. E-mail the organization’s leader, and express to them some attenuated connection your organization has to the event. Are they the Securities Law Organization (SLO), and are you the BLS Bingo Society (BLSBS)? Hey, both of your financial fortunes are contingent on old people regurgitating random numbers. Offer to chip in for sandwiches or soda or plates or something. Demand co-sponsorship in return. Do not back down.
And presto! Your organization has held an event.
2. Get Creative With E-Board Responsibilities
So, you at least have an e-board. Granted, that election you ran had all the democratic zeal of one run by Robert Mugabe, but still. But what do your e-board members do beyond bury their position in a discarded resume draft? Likely nothing. This, however, is where the framing and persuasive argument skills we all learn in law school come into play.
Does your treasurer have nothing to do with the financial affairs of the organization? You close-minded fools, our treasurer “treasures” the organization, in the affectionate sense!
Does your elected secretary fail to keep any sort of records or book event rooms? Cretins! Don’t you know that secretary also means “a writing desk with shelves on top of it” and that one’s brain could, in a metaphorical sense, be considered a desk with files and information inside and that, therefore, the secretary fulfills all their responsibilities by possessing any level of consciousness or sentience?
Just use these descriptions at your election meeting, if you even host one, and you’ll do just fine.
3. Set Unrealistically Ambitious Semester Goals
One way to benevolently sabotage your organization is to shoot for the stars. Lure students to one of our fine classrooms at the beginning of the semester with the promise of greasy food. And then, you soliloquize. You soliloquize about how your organization will have its “best semester yet” and “get guest speakers from inside the industry.” You’ll take field trips to relevant locations, and host networking events at rooftop speakeasies. Pump the room full of a vigorous, yet ultimately empty, energy.
Then, you wait. You wait until about March, or November, and send an e-mail to your listserv. You write something like “Sorry guys, we really shot for the stars this semester but we just couldn’t make it happen.” Do not provide any explanation as to what exactly you mean by “just couldn’t make it happen.” This will invite unnecessary questions and suspicion. And then, you commence recommendations one and two.
4. Promote Events That No One Actually Wants to Attend
The more involved cousin of tip number 3, but it will prove just as effective in (excusably) flat-lining your organization, while still allowing you to say “Hey, we tried.”
Brainstorm event ideas that not only will be difficult to execute, but also are either boring, uninteresting or weird. This provides the perfect excuse for cancelling your event “due to lack of interest” or because of “campus outcry.” Promote a screening of the movie “Plan 9 From Outer Space” without the Mystery Science Theater 3000 commentary, or a movie about a racist dog. Plaster fliers all over campus about an underwater bingo in the fifth-floor men’s bathroom. The Meta-Club can shout from the mountaintops about a “Panel Discussion about Panel Discussions.” You get the idea. Your organization will be visible, yet largely ignored and marginalized, which means less work for you.
I wish you the best of success in running your student organization into the ground.
Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress: Censorship, Paranoia, Etc.
Illustration by Shaina Rubin
Over the past few weeks, while trying to get my new organization, Monthly Expense Project, recognized by the SBA, and while trying to advertise for my Open Mic event, I have been exposed to the bureaucracy of the student body. That’s right, the student body– not the administration—and I believe I have a claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress. (It is important here to note that I take no issue with the SBA in regards to MEP, as they were actually quite supportive of my proposal).
I posted an ad on the window of the student lounge on the first floor, and the student lounge in the library 1M floor. Both were up on Friday morning (and had been up for two days), and down Saturday morning. I asked the guard what happened and he said that a dean probably complained and asked a maintenance worker to take it down. I’d like to investigate this because I actually think a student did it.
I am going to avoid the argument that my First Amendment rights have been violated by the removal of this ad because I don’t have enough space in this column for that (and because BLS is a private institution, not a public one). But someone, a friend of mine, stated that we “signed something away” when we signed up to go to school here, and one of these freedoms was the ability to post an advertisement on glass. This was a two-sided ad, which is to be sure, a rarity in the advertising world. How do we reward creativity? We ban it.
I understand the prudential arguments – that other members of the co-sponsoring clubs did not want to be seen to be associated with someone so unstable and crazy as to post an ad with hundreds of words of text, and several “controversial” statements about religion, sexuality, how no one would show up to the event, and how no one would even read the ad. Never mind that the co-chair of this special sequence of events read the ad and saw no problem with it. Even after I revised the ad and put up a huge disclaimer, the complainants felt this was even more offensive in a way. I can’t win.
BLS does state a policy [pdf] on advertising on bulletin boards: students may utilize bulletin boards if their flyer complies with all requirements. My flyer complied with all requirements – except I noted my address at gmail, not brooklaw. What a mistake. Nobody mentioned the *beverages* line in it, which was arguably the most “illegal” thing about it. Moreover, I was told, we cannot advertise on glass. While this provision mentioned bulletin boards specifically, we can get into a kind of statutory construction argument here – does the omission of glass in the policy statement imply that it is allowed, or not? In this case, not, so long as it advances your argument.
I know the ABA is coming to visit soon, and believe me, if those ads were taken down the day before this visit, I would understand and not complain. But we have about 8 days until the event, and it is necessary to get as much interest as possible.
Even so, I do not believe that advertising on glass is something that an ABA representative would see and consider it so offensive that it would negatively criticize BLS – it would show that students have an interest in making their voices heard – which is something that law school implicitly encourages. We have a class on the First Amendment, and we consider which forms of speech are protected, and which are not. I have not taken First Amendment Con Law, but let me try to make an educated guess, and you can comment and tell me if I’m wrong about it:
I think the question to consider is this: does the school’s interest in restricting my speech outweigh my interest in making that speech? In the case of an ABA visit, perhaps, but even that is a speculative assertion. The ABA might, perhaps, care more about post-graduation employment data, or the cut-backs on summer public service grant funding, or whether BLS intends to keep their incoming classes smaller, like the current 1L class.
I think I’d lose this case because my opportunities to advertise elsewhere are ample. Regardless, I can’t help but feel that this underscores the hypocrisy of the institution – not BLS itself, but the institution of law school. It is not the time and place to take the administration to task – that will be next week – but schools that want to encourage free and open debate should not remove posters without any notice to the student responsible. It’s possible that the students I had these “free and open debates” with removed them, and I’d like to know if the administration had any problem with them. In general, while I am unhappy about losing 45% of my funding for this year, and $2,000 for funding next summer, the administration has not seriously “screwed me” on anything (negligent misrepresentation aside, for now), and in general, has never aimed to hinder my interest in free speech. It has always been students. Until the truth about the removal of this ad comes out, the burden is on the defendants to rebut my presumption.
Christopher J. Knorps is a 2L at Brooklyn Law School. He enjoys studying bankruptcy law. He does not enjoy getting into fights. Please e-mail him at Christopher.knorps@brooklaw.edu or jack.knorps@gmail.com (if you prefer the chat thing) for any comments, criticisms, or interest in performing at the Vagina Monologues/Open Mic event on April 5, 2012, from 7:00 – 10:00 PM at Geraldo’s.
