Law Schools

Columbia Law Review Asks To Cancel Exams Amid Administrative Grading Confusion, General Absolute Chaos

But will Columbia Law listen to reason?

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Dozens of students arrested at the occupied Hamilton Hall building of Columbia University in New York

(Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

There are a lot of anti-war encampments on college campuses around the country. Most of them aren’t generating any headlines because their administrations are taking a laid-back approach. Regardless of one’s stance on the protests, the schools relying upon the end of the semester to naturally transition the encampments into less permanent forms of protest have so far done a good job of balancing a functional institution with respecting student expression.

Columbia University’s president Minouche Shafik took a different angle and asked the NYPD to roll in and leave a garrison through the end of the school year. The NYPD had more than enough resources to do so, despite constant claims that the city is in the throes of an historic crime wave that curiously doesn’t show up in any objective statistical measurement.

Shafik’s decision leaves the school in the worst of all worlds with an irate student body and complete confusion about institutional function.

And this has carried over to the law school as well.

With everything that’s happened, Columbia Law Review and several other journals voted to issue a statement calling for the school to cancel exams or, in the alternative, to make them mandatory pass/fail.

The violence we witnessed last night has irrevocably shaken many of us on the Review. We know this to be the same for a majority of our classmates. Videos have circulated of police clad in riot gear mocking and brutalizing our students. The events of last night left us, and many of our peers, unable to focus and highly emotional during this tumultuous time. This only follows the growing distress that many of us have felt for months as the humanitarian crisis abroad continues to unfold, and as the blatant antisemitism, islamophobia, and racism on campus have escalated.

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As predictable as night follows day, right-wing troll outlets are already mocking Columbia law students for talking about “violence” and being “irrevocably shaken.” But beyond the smug posturing, there’s not so much a substantive counter to the arguments laid out in the letter.

Because it seems as though it’s a complete mess up there. Another Columbia tipster informed us earlier in the day:

Today, 30 minutes before an exam, some students received emails letting them take their tests any time during the examination period. No one knows why and people are confused. Communication from the registrar said everyone was gonna be able to do all their exams at any point, but then the Dean said this was not the case. It’s a whole mess, and a lot of people are gonna suffer gradewise.

Canceling exams is a drastic move and, to be honest, it should be an unnecessary one. But that assumes the school can actually figure out a time for students to take them and since that appears to be a hurdle, maybe it is the right call.

But assuming the administration of exams in a reasonably accommodating manner can’t get worked out, the mandatory pass/fail option articulated in the letter is a sound proposal with no real downside.

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From the Law Review letter:

Instituting an optional Pass/Fail policy is not really optional when employers will see that some students have grades and others do not. Even if they pledge to not take this grade disparity under consideration during their evaluation (which they haven’t made any such pledge), this leaves room for the introduction of extreme bias into the hiring process. This outcome will leave the most vulnerable students unable to perform to their highest ability.

This should not be controversial. This came up at my law school years ago when external events created a problem with one class and the decision was made to mandate a pass/fail grade because an optional model would create a stigma. But then again, NYU is always ahead of Columbia, isn’t it?

Seriously though, the school can’t get its schedule straight and students have had their preparation disrupted by unexpected intervening events. What is the harm in going to mandatory pass/fail? Employers will lose a smidgeon of distinguishing information about candidates, but the risk that they’d get inaccurate intel from a graded exam this week is just as bad if not worse. Better to rely on the pass/fail marker and, you know, last semester’s grades to get an actionable sense of the applicant.

This is an easy decision.

But there are going to be people quick to ask, “how can they be lawyers if they can’t draft an M&A agreement every time there’s an unprecedented paramilitary invasion on their block?” How indeed.

(Full letter on the next page…)

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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