On Wednesday it was announced that Whittier College’s law school–located in Costa Mesa in Southern California–will be discontinuing its program. As the school’s board of trustees announced on Wednesday, Whittier would not be accepting a law class for Fall 2017.

As the Los Angeles Times reported, the school’s spokeswoman Ana Lilia Barraza said that the school will develop a plan to ensure that students who already enrolled will finish their degrees. According to the National Jurist, most schools in Whittier’s situation file for something called a “teach out” with the Department of Education, which would allow for a school that is closing to help enrolled students finish their programs while not losing certain federal loan options. However, Whittier has not yet begun the  process for filing for a teach out.

The reason for Whittier Law’s closing looks like it may be due to a mix of factors including its discouraging post-grad employment numbers amongst its students, its shockingly low percentage of students who pass California’s bar exam, and its rapidly decreasing admittance rates. According to the Orange County Register, Whittier law school graduates who found full-time employment in 2015 was less than half the national average, the percentage of first-time takers of the California bar exam was almost 40 percent less than the average among other law school campuses in the state, and over the past couple of years, the small school has seen its number of admitted students drop from 1,579 students admitted in 2013 to 934 in 2016.

The closing will make Whittier Law the first American Bar Association accredited law school to shut down in three decades, according to the Los Angeles Times. “We believe we have looked at every realistic option to continue a successful law program” reads an official message from the chairman of the Whittier Board of Trustees. “I appreciate the gravity of this decision and its impact on the lives of all those who belong to the Law School community.”

Austin Elias-De Jesus

Austin is an editorial intern at Law Street Media. He is a junior at The George Washington University majoring in Political Communication. You can usually find him reading somewhere. If you can’t find him reading, he’s probably taking a walk. Contact Austin at Staff@Lawstreetmedia.com.

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Research and analysis done by Law Street’s Law School Rankings team: Alexis Evans, Anneliese Mahoney, Sean Simon, Alex Simone, Inez Nicholson, Ashlee Smith, Sam Reilly, Julia Bryant.

Click here for detailed ranking information for each of the Top 10 Law Schools for Labor Law.

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Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Top 10 Law Schools for Labor Law: #3 University of Chicago Law School appeared first on Law Street.

Research and analysis done by Law Street’s Law School Rankings team: Alexis Evans, Anneliese Mahoney, Sean Simon, Alex Simone, Inez Nicholson, Ashlee Smith, Sam Reilly, Julia Bryant.

Click here for detailed ranking information for each of the Top 10 Law Schools for Labor Law.

Click here to see all the 2016 specialty rankings.

Click here for information on rankings methodology.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Even casual consumers of online media have probably noticed the now-ubiquitous trend  of the ‘trigger warning.’ Usually right at the beginning of a piece, the short blurb warns readers of potentially disturbing or sensitive information — rape, eating disorders, shootings, etc. — before they stumble upon it unprepared. As a recent Buzzfeed article points out, some sites, such as Shakesville, add warnings to nearly everything, including a photograph where the writer’s dogs are baring their teeth in a way that could be perceived as aggressive. Other sites, such as Jezebel, purposely do not include trigger warnings.

Trigger warnings are pretty much everywhere on the internet, but now they’ve started to creep into the real world. A number of colleges have received requests from students that trigger warnings be added to syllabi to indicate troubling material, and the issue has sparked debate across college campuses.

I know that I have heard the conversation myself a few times at my own university, but I have very mixed feelings about trigger warnings when it comes to college material. Should people be able to prepare themselves for difficult content? Sure. Are there certain topics that can be emotionally damaging? Yes. But should trigger warnings be required on college syllabi? I don’t think so.

Trigger warnings on syllabi could force optional content and make courses unbalanced: There are two reasons that trigger warnings exist: 1) to allow someone time to mentally and emotionally prepare for a difficult read; and 2) to allow someone to back away from the content because they make the choice not to read it. While the first could be an appropriate use of a warning on college syllabi, the latter is problematic.

How might a professor fairly teach a subject that is perhaps controversial if she is mandated to include trigger warnings? She includes the warnings and as a result student A claims he can’t participate in a certain triggering reading; student B won’t participate in another; and students C-Z all say the same thing. The professor is left with a hodgepodge of students who all covered different material. How does one design a final around that? Non-tenured professors especially would worry about the ramifications of their jobs.

Professors have been dealing with tough subjects since the dawn of academia, and if they’re not dealing with them properly, that’s something to fix.  I was an International Affairs major with a concentration in security studies, which meant that I took a lot of very disturbing classes. Security studies focuses on war and conflict: civilian victimization, terrorism, gender violence, etc. I ostensibly had people in some of those many classes who could have found some of the material triggering, and in my opinion, every time, my professors handled it properly. Whether it was a video, or a reading, they provided fair warning but explained how it was essential to our discussion and lesson. They exhibited sensitivity, and compassion. And pretty much every time I was involved in a class discussion regarding a difficult topic, students were fairly respectful of each other because of the serious and appropriate environment our professors created.

Academia is a space that requires the discussion of difficult topics. Rich Lowry’s National Review op-ed, though highly inflammatory, makes the fair point that anything can be triggering to anyone. Focus on providing the resources to have productive, sensitive, and safe discussions about such topics, because at the end of the day, that is one of the purposes of academia.

Life doesn’t have trigger warnings: I wish it did, but it doesn’t. There’s no trigger warning to stop you from turning on the news at an inopportune moment and seeing something that invokes traumatizing memories. There’s no trigger warning to stop something terrible from happening in front of you, or to avoid an acquaintance’s disparaging remark, or to stop some asshole from yelling something disgustingly racist, sexist, homophobic, or harmful at you on the street. I know because all of those things have happened to my friends.

Academia has a rare opportunity to help discuss these issues in a safe place. It provides the opportunity for students to test the boundaries of what triggers them and then if they want to, get help to work on those issues.

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Openclips via Pixabay]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Trigger Warnings Creep Off the Web and Into the Classroom appeared first on Law Street.

It was difficult to discern reality from fantasy in Tallahassee last winter. Jameis Winston, the college football phenom who was leading Florida State to an undefeated season, was dealt a hard dose of real word problems when he was investigated for sexual assault in November.  If charged, he would likely face suspension, and FSU’s dream of becoming national champions would remain fantasy. In December however, Winston was cleared and no charges transpired. The following week, Winston won the Heisman Trophy, and a few weeks later he led his team to a dramatic victory to claim the national championship. It appeared that reality was indeed sweet, and the rape investigation was simply a bad dream. Or was it?

On April 3, the Federal Department of Education (DOE) announced that they would be investigating FSU for whether they improperly handled the Jameis Winston sexual assault case. Under the landmark legislation known as Title IX, universities are required to “promptly investigate” reports of sexual assault. FSU may not have investigated quickly enough, according to the DOE.

FSU’s alleged failings were highlighted on April 16, when the New York Times published an article detailing the missteps of both the University and the Tallahassee Police Department, and charging that the University didn’t investigate when they initially found out about the alleged incident in January 2013.

FSU fired back at the New York Times, claiming in part that “no university official outside the Victim Advocate Program received a report from any complainant naming Winston prior to when the allegations were made public in November 2013.” At first glance, the statement would seem to exonerate the University. On closer inspection, a rather high burden is placed on the victim in order for FSU to comply with Title IX. Must a university official receive a report from the complainant in order to investigate? Must an accuser be named in order to investigate?

A cursory look at the DOE’s guidelines on sexual assault suggest no. In fact, the following line seems to suggest that schools err on the side of caution:

“…if a school knows or reasonably should know about possible sexual harassment or sexual violence, it must promptly investigate to determine what occurred…”

It is possible that Winston’s accuser failed to tell anyone employed by the University about her assault. After all,Tallahassee police primarily handled the report because the incident happened off campus. I called both the Tallahassee Police Department and the Florida State University Police Department (FSUPD)  to follow up on this matter. I asked if there is a policy requiring that arresting officers, whether employed by the school or by the city of Tallahassee, notify the University upon arresting an enrolled student. FSUPD responded that it is practice for all officers to report student-arrests to the University, at which point the University handles any academic penalties according to the student conduct code.

Is it possible that Tallahassee Police report to the University only student-arrests and not allegations of sexual assault on students? The logic behind such a policy may be difficult for DOE investigators to understand, as would the general excuse that although the Tallahassee Police Department knew of a fairly detailed sexual assault accusation on an FSU student since December 2012, the University did not know until the following November.

In the ensuing months, one if not both institutions will be to blame. Either the Tallahassee Police failed to tell FSU, or FSU failed to investigate when they were told by police. If it’s the latter, expect harsh penalties from both the Department of Education and the NCAA. If FSU football thinks they’ll avoid that reality, they better wake up.

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Andrew Blancato (@BigDogBlancato) holds a J.D. from New York Law School, and is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. When he’s not writing, he is either clerking at a trial court in Connecticut, or obsessing over Boston sports.

Featured image courtesy of [Zennie Abraham via Flickr]

Andrew Blancato

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