Bob's Plea For Help
Two things struck me about BB's email today ("Food, Vermin and You. A Serious Plea for Help."). First, he must not be a fan of the serial comma. Second, does any of this really need to be said?
I disagree emphatically when it comes to serial commas, but I'm also BB's biggest fan so I'll cheerfully let it pass. I peeked into the Student Center on my way out of Boalt today and, sadly, he's correct on the second point.
There can be such thing as a hygienic construction zone. Let's make it happen.
I disagree emphatically when it comes to serial commas, but I'm also BB's biggest fan so I'll cheerfully let it pass. I peeked into the Student Center on my way out of Boalt today and, sadly, he's correct on the second point.
There can be such thing as a hygienic construction zone. Let's make it happen.
posted by Patrick Bageant at 3:16 PM
28 Comments:
The email:
This is one of those e-mails that no one wants to write, but, as the Walrus said, the time has come. The nature of common space and the limited number of overworked custodians here at the law school demand it. Everyone has to start cleaning up after themselves. People are leaving messes that are severely irritating other humans who must use the same space and that are causing joy in the vermin community.
First, the Law Library. The bottom line is this: you can eat in the Main Reading Room, but you cannot eat in the North Addition. At all. No food, not even a package of crunchy m&ms or carrot sticks. You can bring in drinks in a secure container, but no paper cups, cans, open cups, etc. In the fall the library folks gave out spill-proof cups for just this purpose. If you have lost your cup, stop by the reference desk for another, while supply lasts of course. Mice and roaches are appearing in the North Addition. They are lured by folks who are leaving behind sticky residues on desktops, spilling foamy lattes on the carpet and generally strewing crumbs in all directions. No one wants to be the food police, but no one wants to share the space with roaches. Help us out here.
Second, the Student Center: The Student Center was built and furnished to a high standard in the hope that it would be enjoyed by you and future generations of folks like you. We are off to a bumpy start. Currently it appears that there are major feeding frenzies in a space that was designed primarily to be office and study space. Folks have been leaving seriously gross food messes on the tables in the lounge and conference rooms, on kitchen counters and in the sink.. If you leave out open food containers, rodents and roaches, who are even luckier than the ones in library, inevitably show up. Someone has to clean this mess up. Just leaving it puts an unfair burden on our overworked custodial staff. It also hacks off other students who follow you into the space and do not wish to be trying to work in a space that approximates Seth Rogen's apartment. It just is not fair.
This is not a complex message: clean up after yourselves. The custodial and facilities staff are not responsible for putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher, removing leftover food from the kitchen counters or the conference rooms or for clearing trash left on tables in the student lounge. Wash your own dishes. If you have food and drink at a journal or organizational event, have someone responsible for cleaning the place up.. Do not leave open containers of food on the kitchen counters or conference rooms to "share" with others--it never works out that way. Break down and flatten you cardboard boxes so custodial staff can collect them (we do not have pizza box-sized recycling bins). The law school provides liquid cleanser and dish washer detergent in the kitchen, as well as general cleaning supplies including paper towels and sponges for you to use. There is a dishwasher (drawer-style) available. The two refrigerators in the shared kitchen are being cleaned out weekly. There is even a vacuum cleaner in the copy room should you be so inclined.
As a natural born spiller of beverages and dropper of food, I understand the root of this problem. But until we can hire extra teams of custodians, or journals can employ their own cleaning staff, everyone has to pitch in. See, I told you that this wan an e-mail that no one wants to write.
At least it was fun to read!
How old are we? I mean, seriously...
Did anyone attend the CDO / financial aid discussion at lunch today? If so, what was the bottom line? Thanks!
3:58 - I attended and thought of writing up a summary.
Then I realized nothing much was said, a lot more questions were asked than answered, and the FAO decided to send their own summary via email in a week or two with the necessary information / answers to today's questions.
Enjoy the "serial comma"...
Bottom line for job placement--things are bad but don't hate your firm for doing this. They're protecting the firm. If your offered a chance to defer, probably take it b/c if you show up in January you'll make their lives hard.
Re: student loans: Wait for an e-mail after they've done some more research. Today they were just reading us stuff that's available on the web. Also, everyone's situation is unique. Someone named Candy at the financial aid office can help with your individual plan. She is at the financial aid office, which was just moved a mile from the school down Telegraph. Feel free to make an appointment. There is apparently a shuttle that will take you there.
re: serial commas.
bob berring is right.
I'll base my serial commas argument on the following book dedication by Teresa Nielsen Hayden:
To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.
To how many entities is the book dedicated?
Two, because apparently Hayden's parents are Ayn Rand and God.
It's silly that people leave messes. Matt summarizes my thoughts on this neatly.
I was confused about one point... leaving food out for others. Was BB referring only to the kitchen counters and conference tables? Or generally? (such as after meetings in the 100/105/110 hall) I hate to see food go to waste, and it seems like it gets eaten when it's left out there. In fact, I can say that I have personally seen everyone that has responded in this thread so far take food that was left over from meetings and placed in the hallway. A recent study done shows that these hallway leftovers have sustained 23% of Boalt's student population, and 3% of Berkeley's bum population.
Anyway, I'm with BB on the rest: clean your stuff up. Don't act as entitled as those Harvarders.
Also, for more support of the comma before the conjunction in series, see Chicago Manual of Style 6.19.
Note, that link might make you use your CalNet ID.
1. BB is wrong. Impromptu food sharing works extremely well at Boalt. The great majority of food left over from meetings gets eaten by other students (and random visitors) within an hour of being left out.
2. There are no large garbage bins in the new student center. As BB points out, there also aren't large recycling bins for pizza boxes, even if they are broken up. There are only these useless tiny blue recycling baskets. So where exactly are we supposed to clean things up to?
3. There's a valid point (which BB doesn't make) to moving the "de facto" leftover food area to the kitchen.
4. People who refuse to insert a serial comma would steal sheep.
Frankly, I find all of BB's construction related emails condescending at best, rude at worst. Calling Dean H*rshen's maternity leave unfortunate? Saying that we are "severely irritating other humans"? I don't find his phrasing cute at all.
On the topic of recycling pizza boxes, for those of you out there environmentally conscious enough to actually recycle your pizza boxes, please note (if you didn't already know) that pizza boxes are not entirely recyclable. Any food contamination (i.e. grease, cheese, etc.) which soaks into the cardboard renders it unrecycleable. Putting the contaminated product in the recycling bin actually makes the recycling process more expensive for whatever body collects the product because it then has to be separated out. The better method is to separate the grease spots from the cleaner parts of the pizza box, which can still be recycled.
The irony of Caley's comment is that Caley is telling people who are too lazy to even put the pizza boxes in a proper receptacle to separate them into their greasy and non-greasy component parts and deposit them accordingly. (Sorry, Caley, I just couldn't resist...)
HA! Good point. But hopefully there are a few out there who actually DO take the time to recycle and who didn't already know about that fact. I definitely wasn't aware until college when I lived with the guy who ran the school's recycling program. As for the degenerates who don't have the common courtesy to clean up their messes, there's not much help for them anyway. They'll probably just use this fact as an excuse to not recycle.
Tragedy of the commons. It'd be nice if people would clean up after themselves. Unlikely to happen though, so Boalt needs hire more janitors.
More questions about the CDO talk:
-Did the CDO have any suggestions about what to do in the intervening time if deferred until December/January/etc.?
-And they were definitely sold on taking a longer deferral option if one is given? I think deferring is a good chance to do something you might not otherwise get to do in your career, but on the other hand, there is something to be said for starting. Especially when we don't know things will be any better in January 2011.
As for the "something to be said for starting," TG said showing up in January not only will make the firm's lives harder (they're trying to save money by deferring you), but there may not be work for you to do and that IF things don't get better ("lot of ifs," he said) then you MIGHT get laid off later (when the deferral option is no longer on the table). He said to give the deferral option serious consideration.
He also suggested seeking out someone you trust, etc. at the firm to try to feel out the local situation.
He also said he recommended you actually do something productive during that time off. Because once they've deferred you once, there's not really anything keeping them from deferring you again. So be doing something--career-furthering, not bumming around India like the traveling Skadden lady from the Sunday Times.
He said the CDO will help you find something to do. And I think there's a new tab on their web site with information about places recruiting displaced associates.
It was a pretty depressing talk but he said that we should take a long view of our careers and realize that we'll mostly be in different places in 5 years or so.
opened new forum for the continuing CDO discussion...
Back on topic, does anyone else think a large part of this problem is the lack of cleaning supplies in or around the student center? I assume that most people are courteous enough to throw their stuff away after use, but if there's a spill or other messy situation, we have very few means of dealing with it. If there was a vacuum down here, I guarantee I'd take a ten minute break from this Motion for SJ to go over the BJCL floor. And if we had surface cleaner, I'd also go over the desk.
Dan, according to Bob's email, there's a vacuum in the copy room. Check the cabinets in the kitchen for surface cleaner. Happy cleaning!
And don't forget that grease/food covered cardboard is fully compostable. Perhaps we should start a little compost heap in the middle of the student center?
Not sure how I missed that. I shall vanquish the grime in BJCL!
I've said it again and I'll say it again: I'm truly afraid that the reason Boalt doesn't give us nice things is because we aren't capable to keeping nice things. Clean up your messes, people! Jeebus.
And what happened to the handle on the refrigerator in the kitchen?! And who put a bottle of wine in the ice drawer, melting it and also making it unsafe for drinking? "We just can't have nice things" is right. I honestly can't decide if people are clueless or just jerks.
Chicago Manual of Style encourages use of serial comma, but it is optional unless the meaning becomes confusing without the final comma. The law journal I was on used them, but now that I'm an actual lawyer, I see that no one in the legal world uses them. But writing in the legal world is god awful.
@ 1:18, just curious, have you ever had an attorney redline out a serial comma in something you've turned in? Has anyone tried to argue against its use? Or are they just ignorant of the issue?
To answer your question, because it is conventional use, I only insert the final serial comma in my work if there is a series of phrases or if not inserting the final comma results in a confusing meaning. And it has never been edited out by anyone. I actually find myself editing out the final serial comma from other people's work now, because I know that if I don't someone else will, or the document will be internally inconsistent.
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