Law School Daze

Ann Althouse posts this afternoon about law students taking advantage of their school's Wi-Fi system to IM each other in class and asks if maybe this might not be something to encourage rather than suppress. She says, in part:

We got going on the subject of how maybe we should outright encourage the students to IM, including sending tips and cues to a student who is engaged in Socratic dialogue with the lawprof. What's wrong with students pooling their expertise on the fly? The student doing the speaking is not rendered passive. He or she will still have to read the messages quickly and integrate them with existing knowledge. It could be lively and energizing.

"Lively and energizing" is about right. Allow me to share a precautionary anecdote that several people swear happened to someone in the class ahead of me back when I was doing the law school thing. (Our Llama Military Correspondent, who also heard this story, will back me up on it, even if I get one or two details wrong.)

First year criminal law was taught at my school by a former Marine Corp JAG officer, an ass-kicking Southern Boy who routinely showed up for class with a large coffee mug shaped like a shotgun shell. He was a holy terror to all of his students. Indeed, on damp days I can still feel the old wounds where he got me one Ash Wednesday after I foolishly stayed out too late at a Mardi Gras party the night before.

Anyhoo, this professor's modus operandi was to select a victim at the beginning of class and slam them until he got tired of it. So the first five minutes or so, as he did his introductory spiel, was an agonizing time for everybody, as no one knew whose forehead was hosting that little red laser targeting dot. Once he called a name, of course, everyone else unclenched, but the poor victim sometimes was so shaken as to be rendered witless.

So the story goes that one time this Prof was leading the class through a discussion of the Model Penal Code definition of rape. All of a sudden, he turned on some poor girl and said, "Miss So-and-So, what elements do you need to have in order to satisfy the MPC requirements for rape?"

The girl froze up.

As she sat there, the guy next to her leaned over and whispered, "Penetration."

"Penetration!" she blurted out in a panic.

"Penetration, huh?" said the Prof, "How much penetration?"

The girl froze again.

The guy sitting next to her leaned over and whispered, "Ten inches."

"Ten inches!" she blurted out.

The class held its collective breath.

"Ten inches, huh," said the Prof, "Miss So-and-So, I would suggest that not only are you wrong, you're spoiled."

The class went to pieces. If I remember correctly, they were laughing so hard he eventually had to dismiss them.