What a ridiculous overreaction. The Autoadmit post was obviously a joke. Even if it wasn't on Autoadmit, which is known for that kind of humor, it would have been stupid to take it seriously. Considering the context, taking action against the student is completely absurd.

The Hastings Dean overreacted, and now the Boalt administration is following suit. It's sad that the UC law schools are being run by such hyper-reactionary doofuses.

Joke or not... the kid is obviously a douchebag. Who finds that kind of comment funny? This kid is obviously a walking time-bomb waiting to go off at some firm in the form of some sort of discrimination lawsuit... so the school is probably just saving him the hassle of that in the end.

It was not the Hastings Dean who overreacted. The FBI and the SFPD shut down Hastings in response to the threat. Hastings admin really just reported the threat.

There are a lot of things not to like about the Hastings admin (and probably Boalt's, too). But for once, their reaction to this seemingly serious (and random) AutoAdmit post is not one of them.

I'm not sure it's a sound strategy for universities to ignore threats. See, e.g., Virginia Tech.

Cho did not make any public threats before his rampage - on the internet or otherwise.

but VT admin arguably ignored the first shooting

Nothing in the text of the post indicated it was a joke. The FBI, local police and administration all agreed that closing the law school was necessary. If I were the Hastings administration, I certainly wouldn't take the position, sorry Mr. FBI school shootings expert, despite your experience in threat assessment and school shootings, I don't think my school needs to be closed. The potential consequences of being risk averse and overreacting, one day of cancelled classes, were much lower than the potential consequences of inaction, another mass murder.

With respect to the punishment, it should be proportionate to the lapse in judgment shown by the student. A one year suspension would be more appropriate. The reaction of Hastings was clearly a foreseeable result of posting a "joke" about repeating a mass murder only two days after it happened. However one mistake should not end his career.

the kid is obviously a dummy, and no one can fault the police for shutting down the school since everybody was worried about copycat crime. i know people have done much worse things and not been expelled, but if he gets it, he has no one to blame but himself.

5:13, gotcha, I just think there's a slight difference between a post on an Internet cesspool like AutoAdmit and an actual, fatal shooting of 2 students in a dormitory. The latter is clearly a threat, the former is more ambiguous.

Did the kid actually avail himself to the Boalt Dean's office or did they somehow find out?

Keep in mind, the administration "recommended" expulsion... doesn't necessarily mean he will get it. I would be that this gets quietly turned into a 1-year suspension or something like that...

1 year suspension would still be tough to spin on a resume...and what about C&F for bar application? I think this guy is fucked

5:36 - the guy admitted his wrongdoing. i'm sure the administration's response will encourage others to come forward and admit their transgressions in the future.

Actually, 5:11, Cho's writings in his English classes demonstrated that he was a ticking time-bomb, as did his statement to his suit-mates that he wanted to kill himself. While some commenters here state that the Boalt and Hastings administration overreacted, I think these would be the first people to sue the schools for negligence if such a shooting did occur.

Keep in mind, the administration "recommended" expulsion... doesn't necessarily mean he will get it. I would bet that this gets quietly turned into a 1-year suspension or something like that...

I can't say that I ever patronize AutoAdmit, but what does it say for that site that this threat should not have been taken seriously because it was par for the course there? What the hell is going on over there? Aping a mass murder shortly after the worst one in U.S. history happened, when everyone is on the lookout for a copycat event and everyone is questioning why nothing was done sooner about the killer? This person can NEVER be a lawyer in my opinion. If his actions do not show bad judgment and poor moral character, what does? (Shudder). Every time I hear about AutoAdmit, it seems to be pretty damn repugnant--and I have a high free speech/bad behavior tolerance.

Did you read the post on autoadmit? It wasn't really a threat. It was clearly a sacastic comment that the author had decided NOT to go on a shooting rampage because it was a sunny day. While it could be read to be a threat, it also could be read to be a comment on the thought processes of crazies. I think that in order to be kicked out, he had to intend it to be a prank threat, and I don't think the author intended it to be taken as a threat.

Now I know what to do when I need extra time on this take-home.

AutoAdmit is really a window into the sick thoughts of lawyers and future lawyers. How many threads or posts there refer to "n*ggers," "f*ggots," or "c*nts"? And of course superstudyasian/WGWAG. LOL.

The poster/prankster is a trust-fund baby... so I don't really feel bad for him if he has no law career.

Well, his on-line name was "Trustafarian" but that's hardly conclusive.

Whatever happens, he's going to have a tough time explaining this one away on his bar application. So if this gets reduced to a suspension, why bother going through the rest of law school? Save the $100k. Maybe he can get a job with Imus, instead.

Well, I almost get expelled from Hastings because I called a functionary in the records an "asshole."

And, it is a long story, but they really, really were an asshole.

There was a complaint, written charges, a written response, and a hearing with 5 witnesses. It ended with a "letter of reprimand" in my file.

I dont think it justifies expulsion, yet I'm approving of a judicial affairs action that would be recorded on his transcript.

Otherwise, it'd be unfair to the other students to have employers left wondering if every Boalt 2L before them this fall during OCIP may be the wacko they read about.

He should still be given the opportunity to finish school and try to find a job. The good news for him if he doesn't get expelled is at least he will get one before Loyola2L.

Expulsion is fine. I think it is fine to hold professional students up to some sort of standard, and since he probably would have been disbarred...

He goes to Boalt. He should know better. It was a bad joke. Dean Edley is overreacting though, just like Hastings did.

It is kind of absurd that a liberal school like Berkely, where its professors constantly criticizes the Bush administration for cracking down on civil liberties and what they see as overreactions during a war cannot find it in their hearts to give this person a slap on the wrist for what appears to be a poorly thought-out hoax.

Talk about hypocrisy.

dood, liberals are humorless.

-Antonin Scalia

Expulsion or not, would he be admitted to the california bar with this on his record?

this is more indicative of the typical xoxo response to mass shootings.

http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=616148&mc=159&forum_id=2

Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you...

EPIC FAIL.

It was a phenomenally unfunny joke in incredibly poor taste, but he'll never exercise poor judgment like that again. A disciplinary notation on his record that he'll have to explain to C&F would be more than enough punishment. If he's genuinely contrite, I don't even think suspension is appropriate.

Hopefully the Judicial Affairs committee will disagree with the law school's hysterical recommendation.

Who are these people who go on AutoAdmit? I mean really... who are these people?

I think 5:58 has the analysis right here. It matters whether the poster meant this as a hoax (i.e., whether he meant for people to take him to be threatening Hastings, even though he was not).

The thing is, the post doesn't even seem like that was the poster's intention. It just seems like a joke in poor taste, much like many that seem to be posted on the Autoadmit board.

On another note, I'm not convinced the reaction was really foreseeable.

Suppose the poster had made this sort of joke in an email to a group of friends (who all made jokes in poor taste to each other) and someone had forwarded it to Hastings, with the same result. Expulsion still?

I'm not sure how differently people who post tasteless jokes on autoadmit view them from the email case.

How can xoxo be the subject of so much huffing and puffing? By and large it's a board where law students with dark senses of humor and cynical world views come to blow off steam and agitate one another. It didn't invent black humor. And it's no more full of idiots and monsters than the rest of the internet.

The world needs to lighten up and take a look around if they think xoxohth is some harbinger of the apocolypse. It's more tame than real life by far. And as the literary criticism link above demonstrates, it can be pretty god damn funny when it's at its best.

Poor taste in jokes is not a crime. This attitude about jokes being terrorist crimes started with the notion that joking about bombs to TSA employees at airports should be a crime. Maybe in a tense situation at an airport going through security, the rule ought to be that jokes are a crime, but come on. The reaction should be a sigh of relief that this was a bad joke and not a real issue. Lighten up. He or she did not mean it as a real threat. To say that he went to Boalt and should know bettter, well, people make mistakes. This mistake didn't hurt anyone (other than to waste some time and money). To expel a student for this is ridiculous.

xoxo at 09:54pm above gave by far the most sensible and rational response to this whole thing. Whatever you think of Trustafarian, xoxo is clearly a congregation of sick degenerates who delight in racism and sick jokes. Taken in context (especially given the fact that Trustafarian was already a notorious flamer at the time), it was not a threat at all. Besides, what are we stopping here? Just incredibly retarded mass murderers who are stupid enough to announce their plans on the second most widely read legal website? Is this supposed to make us feel safer? For every dumb murderer that they stop this way (EVEN assuming that Trustafarian was a murderer), there are 100,000 smarter ones who would not have announced their plans anyway. So are we any safer? Does this really have any deterrent effect?

Ultimately, what this whole thing does is:
1. Give Hastings some undeserved publicity. I guess they really need it anyway.

2. Give the naive clowns out there a false sense of security. The same way they scan for "bombs" at the airport. As if before 9/11 terrorists were just hand-carrying pipebombs on bard. Bunch of retards.

Can someone post the actual comment from AutoAdmit?

It appears some people here aren't familiar with the story about the boy who cried wolf.

Or with the consequences of yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.

Original thread from AutoAdmit.

Note that Trustafarian edited his original post to "WGWAG" but the original post was preserved by another poster.

http://just-decided-not-to-do-a-murder-suicide-copycat-at-hastings-law.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=616215&mc=112&forum_id=2#7956138

Expulsion strikes me as an overreaction. Publishing a tasteless joke in a forum where tasteless jokes are commonplace is very different from calling in a fake bomb threat or mailing the admissions office a letter full of sweet & low. I feel like Boalt is missing that distinction. There’s no question the post was stupid and in bad taste, but it wasn’t intended to be taken seriously. A couple hours of community service and a note on the guy’s law school affidavit to the bar would be plenty.

what the hell is wgwag?

Is wgwag supposed to be some kind of subliminal message to defeat the stereotypes of the white guys with asian girls? I.e., if enough people repeat white girls with asian guys often enough on the web, people will start believing that these relationships are normal?

why would anyone date an asian guy?

FREE TRUSTAFARIAN! NO JUSTICE NO PEACE

This guy is a d-bag. However, I think this is a bit of an overreaction and a one year timeout would do the trick. Good luck on the C & F.

If it violated the school's code of conduct, and that code requires expulsion for that kind of violation, then expulsion is the punishment, right? Making a false (or real) threat is not the same thing as exercising your rights to criticize the government, 8:05. No hypocrisy there.

At some schools this wouldn't even be a debate. Lie, cheat, or steal at a school with an honor code and single punishment, and out you go.