Student Center Closed for Business
Some time ago, we all received an e-mail from B*rring about upcoming construction issues that will affect students (aka the latest in a long series of hoe-rammings). Most problematic, completion of the West Terrace (which admittedly looks pretty cool) requires closing the student center from May 17th until June 7th. At least, that's how long it's supposed to take. Has there ever been any construction project completed on time? (I'm asking with regard to all of human history, not just Boalt.)
If your journal is like mine, you pretty much stopped work a week ago, with plans to finish up publishing and such after finals. If your editing software is like mine, the publishing process absolutely requires access to your office computer. If your life is like mine, this three - ∞ week closure could not possibly have come at a worse time.
I try not to whine about these things, but so far this has been handled rather poorly. First, they didn't tell us about the upcoming closure until it was too late to plan around it. Second, although B*rring said to contact M*ndi for alternative options, I have done so without result. I maintain faith that the admin will get its act together and help us out here, but so far I haven't seen much effort to do so. I'm posting this to bring the issue some publicity in the hope it becomes first priority after finals.
It reflects poorly on the reputation of all the journals to publish later than we promised, and although delays do happen, I prefer it when they're our fault. The e-mail after the jump.
UPDATE: I said I would stop whining if they set us up with a workspace and computers, and it seems they've done so. Big thanks, M*ndi and the rest of the administration for stepping up on this. I'll post their follow-up e-mail in the comments.
If your journal is like mine, you pretty much stopped work a week ago, with plans to finish up publishing and such after finals. If your editing software is like mine, the publishing process absolutely requires access to your office computer. If your life is like mine, this three - ∞ week closure could not possibly have come at a worse time.
I try not to whine about these things, but so far this has been handled rather poorly. First, they didn't tell us about the upcoming closure until it was too late to plan around it. Second, although B*rring said to contact M*ndi for alternative options, I have done so without result. I maintain faith that the admin will get its act together and help us out here, but so far I haven't seen much effort to do so. I'm posting this to bring the issue some publicity in the hope it becomes first priority after finals.
It reflects poorly on the reputation of all the journals to publish later than we promised, and although delays do happen, I prefer it when they're our fault. The e-mail after the jump.
UPDATE: I said I would stop whining if they set us up with a workspace and computers, and it seems they've done so. Big thanks, M*ndi and the rest of the administration for stepping up on this. I'll post their follow-up e-mail in the comments.
posted by Dan at 1:47 PM
16 Comments:
Once exams and graduation are over, the pace of construction will pick up. Much noisy work has been put off until the academic year was complete. Though you might find it hard to believe, the really loud stuff has been saved. This fact has some immediate implications. If you plan to be around the building this summer, they are important.
We have been informed that in order to finish building the new West Terrace the contractors must close the Student Center, the locker corridor and classrooms 12 and 14, for three full weeks. The closure will begin on Sunday, May 17 (the day after graduation) and is scheduled to last through Sunday, June 7. If the construction deities are on our side we'll reopen the Student Center and locker corridor on Monday, June 8.
We will arrange for some storage space outside the Student Center for any journals that need access to materials during this three week closure period. If you have questions on that score, check with Mindi Mysliwiec. We have also arranged with the contractors to escort journal members into the construction area if they need to retrieve materials during the closure.
The above two paragraphs describe the impact of one short burst of construction activity. There are a few things that will last much longer. The stairway on the Bancroft Way side of the building that leads to the corridor outside the large classrooms (100-110), and the classrooms themselves, will be closed the entire summer. In addition, the stairway on the North West side of the building that leads from the West Terrace up to the door next to classroom 100 will be closed through the end of July.
If this all works as planned, (and really, hasn't everything gone as planned so far?), the place should be in much better shape when classes resume in August. I want to thank you for the incredible patience you have shown during what has been a challenging year. To quote the Dead, what a long, strange trip it's been. Let us all hope that this is the last construction-related e-mail that I must send to you this semester.
Good luck on your finals.
BB
Sure, the office closure sucks for the journals that require their office space to publish on time. But what is the school supposed to to? Delay the construction progress so that the journals can meet their deadlines? Plan for every contingency months in advance? They could have prevented the whole problem by refusing to let anyone use the student center until all the west terrace construction was done -- but I recall a previous post complaining that the journals were not being allowed to move in soon enough.
I'm sympathetic to the logistical hassle this must cause, but it seems to me the school's hands are pretty tied, and frankly I think they've done a remarkable job of accommodating everyone's needs as it is.
Geez, stop whining. It's not like they're springing this on you at the last minute - you have plenty of notice. Move the software onto your personal computer, or just take the whole damn journal computer with you. Deal with it.
I think Dan's point was more along the lines of the inevitable suckitude of construction generally. Not one of us hasn't bitched about it in the past, and the magnitude of it effects more than microcosm we each live in; this post highlight that.
Look, it feels good to complain, and that's what blogs are for. And because I included a finals-mandated ad hominem attack yet, there's this: Patrick smells like soup.
What kind of soup?
What can I say, I'm a whiner. Patrick, I agree the school shouldn't delay construction. On the other hand, it would have been nice to have known about this months ago when we were determining our editing schedules. We start at publication and work backwards, so everything leads up to the exact time when we won't have access to the software we need. Moreover, the publishing process is the ONLY time we really NEED access to the office, since the computers there are uniquely set up to operate the software.
3:26, if you are advocating theft, I'm pretty sure that's an ethics violation. I'll know more by the time I take my final.
To sum up, I am not bitching that construction is happening at all, or even that the office is closing. But they didn't let us know soon enough, and so far, they haven't even responded to my e-mails asking about the alternate options! I don't think that's too much to ask.
I'm with Patrick on this one. This inconvenience is hitting 10 people tops. Big whoop - welcome to living with construction. There's much bigger things to worry about from the admin's POV.
Only gripe here is that you haven't got a settled alternate location yet. I don't see that as a huge deal either, as you've got another week before you need to worry about physically relocating the journal's computer to a new space.
I can name ten people outside my journal who it is affecting. They are all authors expecting to see their articles published by the beginning of June. If they each have ten friends who want to read those articles, that's 100 people. Need I go on?
If they provide the alternate space, consider my bitching revoked. I have asked about it multiple times and heard nothing. I figured it couldn't hurt to sound the N&Blarm.
Yeah, luckily for me (graduating 3L) this won't affect me at all, but if this had happened last year, my summer would have been entirely screwed up.
And yeah, this will definitely affect quite a bit more than 10 other people, not even counting authors. Even though my old journal does remote work over the summer, it still depends on at least some people having access to the office. And if that small group doesn't have access, work more or less freezes. That leads to lots of stress trying to make up time to make printing deadlines.
So unless a solution is developed, that could pretty much screw up a lot of summers for people with much bigger problems on their hands (like making sure they get offers this summer).
This is an unfair alarm. Given how drastic the construction is, things have gone a lot more smoothly this year than I'd ever have predicted. And they're letting us know about the closure (which, granted, sucks, and will certainly impact far more than ten people) several weeks in advance. Cut them some slack.
Caley and Dan: I don't think your analysis has gone far enough.
Those 10 people who can't get to their computers will impact more than just their authors or other members of their journal. You also need to consider the fact that the world will be deprived of the intelligent thought that has now been delayed a couple weeks.
Just think: those couple weeks of not reading about how some obscure case could potentially be read in a different manner may make or break some on-going legal matter in the middle of nowhere (and nobody likely cares about). But you know what? Those lawyers do. Upon the delayed release of this groundbreaking material the losing side will become overwrought with grief and will unleash catastrophic destruction upon the rest of the world.
As such, the callous and negligent (and completely intentional) oversight by this administration in not giving those 10 people their alternate room assignments more than a week in advance of the move has effectively doomed us all. The end.
On the other hand, I think TJ likely only meant to reference the number of people who will be impacted personally by being relocated elsewhere.
Lulz. Well done, 7:05.
Everyone who has said I am being unfair has relied on the assumption that alternate space (with functioning computers) will in fact be provided. As I've said a few times now, I've inquired as to when/how we're going to get this space and have not hear word one.
That's all I'm upset about, and I think it needs to be addressed as soon as possible. Anyone who cares to disagree with me on that can take over my position on the journal.
7:05, deadlines aren't just about getting law journal articles out to the public who may or may not care if they're on time. They're also about staying on schedule for the authors while their piece is still in the production schedule. Journals work hard to have a set production schedule for authors who have busy schedules of their own to keep. My journal's publication process involved sending an article back to the author three times during the production schedule before the article ever went to print. A delay of two weeks in the middle of a busy production schedule throws everything off, including deadlines to get edits back to authors who are expecting them in a certain window. In some situations, an author really doesn't have any other time outside that window to work on the piece, especially for those professors working on multiple publications at once. Missing those deadlines is rude and inconsiderate to those authors who are kind enough to publish with us and reflects poorly on the journal involved and our school in general.
So you're right that very few people tend to care if an issue is published on time, but if publishing late is not the only effect of these delays.
And if anyone was wondering what the hell I was doing up at 1:46AM: Finishing my last law school final ever.
Peace! I'm outta here!
Congrats, Caley! (Although 1:46 AM isn't like absurdly late...)
Journal Editors:
The Student Center will be closed from Sunday, May 17- Monday, June 8, 2009. On Friday, May 15, two computers from each of your journal offices will be moved into carrels in the main Computer Lab in the library for the duration of the closure. You will have access to the computers during the Law Library's open hours. All of the food and drink restrictions for the lab remain in force.
I'm pretty busy with finals right now, but will have more time after Tuesday to help work out any other logistics.
If you are still working on finals - good luck!
Thanks,
M*ndi
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