STARTING on the first week of February, the Law School will begin restricting access to its facilities between the hours of 9 pm and 6 am. Specifically, only University students who have scanned themselves into a computer in the law library will be allowed into the megaplex known as the Harrison Law Grounds.
Additionally, as soon as Spring 2001 comes to an end, the law school computer lab will close, split into two smaller rooms, and offer its computers only to law students.
Writing as a law student, reforms to restrict students' access - primarily undergraduate students - to this form of government cheese could not arrive too soon.
Before some defensive readers begin to think that this writer will claim moral and intellectual superiority on behalf of the law students, in the same tradition of not particularly humble Echols Scholars, that is not my point. Instead, the point is thus: Law students should have first priority to their own school. Two primary reasons support this contention.
The first reason represents basic economics. While the University of Virginia School of Law has the title "University of Virginia" attached to it, it does not receive the same level of state funding that the undergraduate schools receive. In fact, less than five percent of the current budget of the Law school comes from state funds. Consequently, law students - even in-state residents - pay obscenely high tuition rates for the privilege of attending this Top Ten institution. Such higher tuition rates should entitle law students to priority access to their own building.
Furthermore, to account for gaps in state funding, the Law School Foundation solicits generous donations from rich patrons. Consequently, every hall, room and air duct has the name of a person or law firm attached to it. Such funds largely have allowed for the construction of the nice facility currently occupied by so many non-law students. To state an obvious point, those law firms that donated obscene amounts of money did not do so out of a desire for their building to be open to the free world. They did so out of a utilitarian desire to get their names before a large number of potential employees - bloodsucking law students such as myself. Those students should have access to their own building.
The second reason as to why these restrictions are a good thing originates from common sense and the nature of the law school education. The building located adjacent to Darden is known as the School of Law. As that name may suggest, law students primarily like to have access to the scarce study lounges and library study space. However, to be bipartisan, nobody mentioned anything to non-law students occupying the law facilities during most of last semester.
However, such a desire for study space grows exponentially during exam time, as most law students' entire grades for a class depend upon one final exam. Rather than physically throw out non-law students during exam time, the Student Bar Association simply put up large signs asking that study space be reserved exclusively for law students. Such signs had no impact on those studying at the school. As during the regular portion of the semester, one could - and I did - find numerous students discussing biology labs, researching a paper on "Wuthering Heights," and otherwise looking at books containing pictures. Most law casebooks do not contain pictures.
In addition to occupying the study spaces during exam times, large numbers of individuals have taken it upon themselves to use and abuse the Law School computer lab and its policy of offering free printing. For the law students, such printing would include class materials, letters and resumes. Typically, printing simply those materials overloads the printers' capacity. When persons elect to begin printing large pictures of French artwork, Engineering diagrams and descriptions of computer network parts for sale, the computer facilities grind to a halt. Sifting through the six-inch pile of abandoned papers printed on Sunday alone, one could find materials for a Literature class, a Music class, materials on osteoarthritis and 19 pages dedicated to the Stanford Weight Training Program. To keep the network less congested, technicians will keep free printing for law students within a quota. Those exceeding it will pay. Such restrictions represent an obnoxious but necessary means for keeping the networks open for the students to use the facilities.
While these new policies do not exactly represent good will, the days of acting nice have passed. The school's grounds will remain open to all students within the University but will be made a bit more inconvenient so law students themselves can have first priority to the use of their own school. Other students should confine their academic efforts to the numerous additional libraries, study lounges and the beautiful Lawn of Mr. Jefferson.
(Seth Wood's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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