Law Schools

There's Some World-Class, Law School Buck Passing Going On Down In Georgia

Who's in charge down there? Anyone?

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Honestly, Georgia is a complete mess.

Since that’s probably not specific enough, I’m talking about the public law schools in Georgia, institutions that have held out against the overwhelming weight of the legal academy and insist on continuing to issue letter grades for this shambles of a semester while everyone else is adopting at least some form of Pass/Fail grading.

While most holdout schools can lay the blame squarely on the administration, the Georgia schools answer to a higher power, the collection of political appointees making up the University System of Georgia. Early reports out of the law schools saw the schools laying the blame on the USG — a plausible boogey-entity (“Boogey-Board?”) since the state’s governor was busy pretending that coronavirus didn’t exist at the time. Curiously, one early tipster said that the University of Georgia Law powers-that-be were discouraging students from complaining to the USG, which we thought was odd but we wrote it off as an administration hoping to maintain a good relationship with people they depend on.

Now we have multiple reports that students who have continued to try to reach the USG to prevail upon them to alter the decision finally got ahold of a Vice Chancellor who informed them that “our deans had the option to petition for a p/f option all along and that no dean has elected to do so.”

Wait, what? Could this be why UGA didn’t want anyone asking the USG what was up? That’s some shady buck passing if that’s what happened.

That said, I don’t know who to believe. It’s not like UGA is alone on this — is Georgia State also playing the blame game? Or perhaps the USG is the one passing the buck, having signaled to the schools not to bother petitioning and now laying the blame on the administrations? Whatever happened, everyone is quick to point the finger somewhere else.

All that’s clear is that UGA Law is a complete mess right now and it’s all traceable to how this is being handled. The administration is reportedly refusing to have town halls to provide any sort of transparency and the SBA is going on Facebook groups telling people to “stop complaining and start studying for finals,” which is exactly the mentality you want in a zealous advocate. But it does jive with the initial article we wrote on this subject, suggesting that there’s an effort to suppress speaking out about this — within the institution, to the press, and to the USG. I’d bombard the school with media inquiries to try and get a statement, but frankly it would be kind of insulting for Above the Law to get an answer from the administration when they aren’t having meetings directly with the students. Have a town hall and we can all talk about what happened.

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Seriously, the last time I saw leadership this bad out of Georgia the Patriots came back from 28-3.

Oh! And UGA has also decided to allow this semester’s grades to impact class rankings, adding insult to the injury of bull-headedly sticking with letter grades.

Maybe that’s USG’s fault too?

UPDATE: Now that we know that the USG is taking the position that no one has requested Pass/Fail, some Georgia State students have lodged a formal request with the university president to place this on the USG agenda.

Earlier: Political Appointees Still Keeping Law Schools From Going Pass/Fail
When A Law School Says ‘Don’t Contact The Media,’ You Should ABSOLUTELY Contact The Media

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