Mercer Law Students Fight With Faculty on Facebook

You have to love it when law students air the dirty laundry about their school over Facebook. But it’s even better when faculty responds to student concerns on Facebook — and better still when faculty get touchy and defensive on Facebook.

All of that is happening at Mercer University School of Law, where students turned a Facebook status update into a bitchfest about the school’s third tier ranking. The blog But I Did Everything Right gives us the backstory:

Mercer University students, faculty, and staff are in open war against each other and themselves over rankings, hiring decisions, and even the school logo. We have uploaded the facebook argument between Professor Donal Christopher Wells and Mercer Law students on Mercer 3L Charlie Grimsley’s facebook page.

Grimsley’s status update started innocently enough:

Things didn’t really get fun until Professor Wells got involved …

It feels like Professor Wells overacted to Grimsley’s status update:

Once the Professor got into the comment thread, Mercer law students just opened the floodgates on him:

But then another Mercer Law professor, David Hricik, also jumped into the thread:

You know it’s bad, really bad, when one of your own professors talks about your “dismal short-term job future.”

The thread goes on and on — with apologies, further recriminations, and a more full discussion on the search for a new Mercer dean.

But the bottom line is that these students are clearly stressed out. And while the faculty appears to notice it, it’s not at all clear that there’s anything the faculty can actually do to ameliorate the students’ concerns.

War between Mercer Law Students and Faculty Spill Over Onto Facebook [But I Did Everything Right]