Harvard Law School Student Government

Congratulations to our new Student Government Representatives!

1Ls:

Jessica Tiller

David Kleban

Rachna Shah

Sean Hill

Alex Burkhardt

Skyler Cho

Lina Jun

2Ls:

Victoria Baranetsky

Eddie Casal

Albert Wu

Transfers:

Kasey Martini

LLMs:

Angela Kwan

Diana Marinescu

Brechie Hertoghs

Saijad Nematollahi

SJD:

Yaron Nili

Upcoming Events:

Tuesday, Sept. 29: Information Session with LUNCH (Pound 108, noon)

Thursday, Oct. 1: Student Government Pub Night at Queen’s Head 5:30-7:00 pm (free beer and wine).

1Ls: Come early (at 5:00 pm) to meet your Student Government and learn more about elections!

Friday, Oct. 2: Student Government candidacy statements due at 11:59 pm.

Wednesday, Oct. 7 – Friday, Oct. 9: Student Government Elections

A quick look at our recent accomplishments:

• Student Government Pub Nights: very popular weekly happy hours for students, with free beer and wine (starting this year on Thursday, Oct. 1!)
• Faculty-Student Lunch Program: every year, we arrange for students to have free lunches with distinguished HLS professors.
• Organize and distribute Unofficial Course Evaluations each semester.
• Solicited, collected, and presented student feedback regarding the grade change to Dean Kagan.
• Solicited, collected, and presented student feedback regarding the switch to the Early Interview Program to Office of Career Services.
• Formed and headed a student committee to meet with President Faust on the new dean search.
• Changed news@law in order to allow students to plan their weeks more conveniently.
• Convinced administration to buy toasters for the 2008-2009 free Monday morning bagel breakfasts.
• Obtained Splenda, strawberry cream cheese, and Heinz ketchup in the Hark.
• Worked with Restaurant Associates to respond to vegetarian students’ needs, including increased quantity of vegetarian sushi and better vegetarian labeling.
• Increased quantity of sweat towels at the Hemenway gym.
• Successfully advocated to see the Hark re-open from 2:30-5:00 to serve students’ needs in 2009.
• Distributed bags filled with candy and faculty advice to the 1Ls when they received their grades.
• Created a database of 3Ls willing to give 2Ls advice on applying to law firms.
• Dodgeball tournament (co-sponsored with HL Central and the intramural sports).
• Approved of many new students groups in 2008-2009.

UPDATE: Dodgeball was a huge success: lots of beer was drunk, balls were thrown, and beers were thrown…

Sixteen teams competed, and congrats to the winning team: “Wish this were softball.”

The HLS Student Government is pleased to announce the return of a great institution: DODGEBALL.

Friday, April 24, you will have license to drink (free) beer and then throw red balls off of your classmates.

Get your teams together. We have room for 16 teams made up of fifteen or more players. The tournament will be a one-afternoon event near the Hark. The opening round will start at about 3:30. The Championship Game should be finished by 7:30.

We understand that getting 15 people together may be difficult, so we will allow you to submit partial teams of either 5 or 10 players. These partial teams will be grouped together to form the proper number. Because of the time and space constraints, priority will be given to the full 15 player teams.

The sign ups will start Thursday, April 15 at noon, first come first serve. We will send another email that morning with these registration details, but have your teams ready!

UPDATE – I know many of you have expressed concern about this memo, about either what the curve looks like or what the results will be of explicitly releasing the information.  A few of you have also asked about what the Student Government can, should, or is going to to do about it.  I wanted to let you know that I am meeting with Dean Jackson this week to share this feedback with him, and to discuss potential ways to address or alleviate the concerns that have been expressed.

It is worth noting, however, that whether it seems like it or not, it took the Administration years of debate, study, and discussion to make this grade change happen, and they are not likely to make vast changes to it without at least taking a few years to really assess its effect on the students.  Still, we will share this feedback, and what we can definitely hope for is to work with the Administration to either share some extra information or make some small changes that might help to address the concerns that have been expressed here and via your emails.

We’ll keep you updated.

Brian

—————–

Today (4/16), Dean Jackson released a preliminary memo on the HLS grading system and determination of latin honors. What do you think? Let us know!

David

Read all about it: http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=527322

David

More than 800 students have voted in the student government election, and here are the results. Congratulations to the 2009-2010 Student Government!

President: Brian Aune ‘10 

Vice-President: Jennifer Dein ‘11

Treasurer: Hrishi Hari ‘11

Student Advocate: Marissa Ronk ‘11

Internal Affairs Coordinator: Ilana Ettinger ‘11

3L Representatives

Sheila Lopez ’10

Andrea Miller ’10

Jessica Nachman ’10

Peter Ostrovski ’10

Maxine Perkins ‘10

Nilab Rahyar ‘10

2L Representatives

Jon Kurland ‘11

Sam Matthew ‘11

Pablo Ros ‘11

Will Scharf ‘11

Today Howell Jackson, prospective interim acting Dean, hosted a town hall meeting with HLS students. Because some students were unable to, we wanted to fill you in on some highlights:

• Faculty departures for DC: All courses this year were covered by HLS faculty or visitors. Next year’s curriculum will feature many great visiting professors (especially in environmental law), and there should be no significant effect from the faculty departures.
• Curriculum in general: Along with picking classes this Spring, students will be able to fill out a poll about which courses they’d like to see offered. Some of those courses might be added by next year, but some certainly will be added by the year after.
• OCI will be the week before school starts. Flyout week will be the week of September 14th. There may be events for 3Ls during that time, such as symposia on research opportunities or empirical methods classes. In addition, the school will celebrate Columbus Day, creating a small break later in the fall.
• Financial crisis: HLS’s three priorities are “building a terrific faculty, having terrific teaching, and honoring financial aid commitments.” There may be cuts in other “not central” areas (but not coffee). In addition, the NW Corner project will proceed as planned. Furthermore, Harvard University is working with JP Morgan to ensure that all international students have access to loans similar to those that were suspended because of the financial crisis.
• The search process for a permanent Dean, led by President Faust, has begun. She will likely reach out to students, staff, alumni, and even employers during the process.
• 2L Mixed Transcripts: 2Ls will graduate with Latin honors, based on an averaging of their A/B/C and HP/P/LP grades. The algorithm for that weighting is not public, however.
• Next year’s academic calendar has almost no time between Winter Term and Spring Term. On the other hand, synchronizing with the rest of the University allows for much better cross-registration opportunities. 
• The “Programs of Study” are in beta-test mode now. They will become more significant in the future.
• MyPlan will be fixed, but slowly.

David

Today the 1L class received its first set of grades, officially marking the completion of that class’s first semester at HLS. In celebration, the Student Government handed out more than 250 bags of candy. In addition, each bag contained a letter which, among other things, listed some less-than-stellar grades which HLS’s star faculty earned in their respective first years at law school.

David

Four new 1L representatives were elected during the midterm elections. We welcome them to the Student Government:

Section 1: Sam Matthew

Section 2: Philip Dawkins

Section 3: Jon Kurland

Section 6: David Caldwell 

If you would like to order an HLS Section (I-VII) fleece, see they flyer linked below.  The fleeces do not have a class year on them so they can be ordered by any class level that still feels any section solidarity but didn’t get the chance to order one of these fleeces yet.  Orders are run through the HBS Student Association and must be placed online anytime next week.

hls-section-fleece-flyer

Brian

Gregory Dworkowitz, a student representative on the Financial Services committee, reports:

“We had our first meeting last week.  We focused primarily on the SFS website, brainstorming ways to simplify the internal site, make it more user-friendly, and help the office run more smoothly.  This is a big project and will occupy much of our time this year.  We also reviewed the data from the last year and projections for this year, focusing on early response to the PSI.  Finally we spoke about the Harvard endowment and any impact its fluctuations might have on our mission.  This was just a preliminary discussion, as we don’t yet know what the budget will look like going forward. We also discussed the need for a 1L on the committee!” 

The Student Government just emailed all 1Ls and LLMs a document called “What I Wish I’d Known Before I Took My First HLS Exams: Advice from 2Ls and 3Ls who’ve been there already.” This document is full of helpful study advice from 2Ls and 3Ls, as well as a series of links to poetntially helpful sites about studying for law school exams.

If you did not get the Student Government’s email, let us know (studentgov@law.harvard.edu) and we’ll send you a copy.

David

The Student Government and the WLA are hosting a panel about exam preparation and study for all 1Ls on Wednesday, December 3rd, at 12:00 PM. Lunch will be served.

If there are particular questions you’d like addressed, let us know at studentgov@law.harvard.edu or just respond to this post.

We’ll also have copies of the “What You Wish You’d Known” pamphlet we’re currently putting together.

David

A quick update on the ongoing Faculty Student Lunch Program.

First, emails are still going out letting students know which lunch they’ve been assigned to.  Second, many students did fill out their surveys “anonymously” and, thus, we were unable to match those requests with the student that submitted them.  If you haven’t heard from us by the end of this week you may want to email studentgov@law.harvard.edu to see if you filled out your poll anonymously.

Third, there are still several lunches with slots available.  If you are interested in attending any of the following lunches, please get in touch with us asap.

Professor Alford: 12/1
Professor Forbath: lunch on Nov.18
Professor Barkow:  Nov. 21, 12:15
Professor Issacharoff: Nov 11 at 5 pm.
Professor Leff: Nov. 19 at noon.
Professor Michelman: Nov. 11 at 1 pm.
Professor Kaufman: Nov. 20 at noon.

Finally, a special thanks goes out to 1L Representatives Jennifer Dein, Marissa Ronk, and Tamara Wyche for their hard work in planning and coordinating these lunches.

Brian