Saw dashrashi's LSN site. Since she seems to use profanity, one could say that HYP does not necessarily mean class or refinement.
I didn't even look at the prices, to tell you the truth. I was so clearly the clueless 0L and the jokes were flying past my head between the employees with such a quickness that I didn't want to ask any questions or even touch anything. Sorry!
Quote from: dashrashi on August 15, 2007, 01:38:53 PMSpaulding, come talk *&^% with us. I'm extra grumpy because I'm badly sunburned and I always feel stupid when that happens. I mean, it's not like this doesn't always happen to me and yet somehow I never put on enough suntan lotion. So here goes.I have a lot of respect for Dan Meltzer but not as a section leader. There aren't nice ways to say some of the things that I'm going to say, but in short he's a dedicated administrator with limited capabilities for understanding his students. He's quite bright and a capable teacher but I don't know a single person in my section who is dying to take another course with him, let alone feels close to him or wants to be his RA. Comparing these sentiments to what students feel about Martha Minnow, Randall Kennedy, Jon Hanson, David Barron, or Liz Warren is embarassing. All of those listed are equally accomplished if not moreso and were significantly closer to their section. Those section leaders are young professors producing incredible scholarship on par with (or surpassing) Meltzer's and yet it seems they do a better job of being a section leader.It's unclear to me why Meltzer remains a section leader other than his willingness to give everything he has to the school. It's true, Meltzer loves HLS and probably does more for it than any other professor (the section model was his idea, he chaired the new building process, etc). His dedication is admirable and I have nothing to say that would mitigate it. I wonder if he's a section leader because he feels it's the right thing to do, not necessarily because he's good at it. Apparently, when he first started teaching, students would leave his Crim Law class in tears because of his obtuseness (as opposed to Dersh's aggressive insensitivity). He's learned to handle a classroom better but not a section and I feel that obtuseness defines his leadership. I can't think of any time I would now turn to him for advice or for assistance beyond a recommendation letter for Crim and I don't think my experience is an outlier for Section 2. Yet Section 2 was an outlier for the rest of the 1L class in this regard. He's great at programming and brings in speakers, but not at connecting with people or understanding his students. Anyone who took him up on his offer to go to lunch knows what I'm getting here. If Dan Meltzer wasn't a section leader, and had just taught me Crim, I'd be insisting that he's a great teacher. Personally, I would have been fine having Minnow, Hanson, Warren, Kennedy, or Barron. Hell, I would have taken Linda Krieger or Bruce Mann over him, despite the fact that they knew nothing about HLS. I think Bass liked him because there wasn't a lot of hand-holding. I think what might surprise him is that there wasn't any hand-holding anywhere else, but that section leaders formed relationships with their students.DISCLAIMER: So I have, well, a somewhat special relationship with Meltzer in that he and I had a fairly substantial disagreement over the course of the year. Every time we met, I just felt more and more alienated and upset by him. Perhaps not everyone who was in the same boat as I was felt this way, but Meltzer effectively divided-and-conquered and made it nearly impossible for the affected students to talk to each other or him about it. Although unintentional, it was a pretty dispicable thing for anyone to do and the fact that he was a section leader made it so there was nobody to whom I could turn. Even now I'm using code words. I'm not anonymous on this board and wouldn't be surprised if some of this gets back to him. He knows that he screwed up this situation and while we may never see eye-to-eye, I'm sure he can better interpret this post in light of what happened.
Spaulding, come talk *&^% with us.
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