4/1/07

in praise of case western

the new US news rankings are out, and case law school is down a couple of spots to 53, still tied with (ugh) baylor, but now behind cardozo, which has still not sent me a decision (i'm *this* close to giving up on you, cardozo!).

if you're one of those neurosis-plagued cro-magnons like the folks who hang out at XOXO, this will make you less inclined to go to case. but i always encourage people who can stomach living in cleveland to come here. it's a good school and it's getting better.

now, i'm not big at all on school loyalty. for example, i'm a umass amherst alum who owns the domain name umass-sucks.com, and plans to use it. i've referred in public to various umass executives as con artists, thugs, liars, hypocrites, racists, classists, troglodytes, ogres, and neanderthals, and i continue to stand by all of those characterizations. i've drawn not necessarily favorable comparisons between vice chancellors and adolf eichmann, and exposed their intellectual shortcomings by shining a spotlight on their dreadfully-written doctoral dissertations.

but case is not umass, and i've been pleasantly surprised since i got here. the administration is so decent that the biggest controversies this year have been over whether paying for the use of printing paper and rented laptops for exams should be on an individual basis or spread out and charged as part of tuition.

and positive changes are coming. dean simson has been putting together a new center for social justice, details of which are still trickling out. this goes a good way towards alleviating one of my two main concerns about case, the lack of a social justice focus. the center kicks off in the fall.

the teachers are mostly good, the staff is good, the resources are good, the building is decent (it's no stata center, but at least it's not the lewis building). the school has an excellent reputation in the region. the cleveland legal community is bigger and better than you might expect. and the living is cheap.

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