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Hey Cavaliers,
In an effort to increase communication between the student body and the Virginia SBA Administration we are soliciting your comments and concerns.
Please let us know what you would like to see happen at this great school.
All the best,
The Virginia SBA Executive Board
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Finals are approaching and group study space is in high demand. As a result, there will be two additional options for study space. Please see the particular rules for each space.
The 1st Slaughter Conference rooms, SL 195 and SL 187, will be available from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. for groups of 4 or more students. Room reservations are posted on each room. These are available till the end of exams.
Six interview rooms will be available from today until Sunday, May 1. They will be available from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. and must be vacated by 10 p.m. To sign up click here. The different rooms can be accessed by the tabs on the bottom of the spreadsheet.
Rules
1. The rooms are for group study.
For Slaughter, you must have a group of at least 4 people.
For the interview rooms you must have at least 2 people (they hold up to 4).
2. You may only use each type of room for 4 hours per day.
3. You are responsible for cleaning the room when your time slot concludes. If the person before you left a mess, please report it to sbasecretary@virginia.edu so that the person who made the mess may be held accountable.
Slaughter Specific Info
Please reserve Slaughter rooms AT LEAST one hour in advance of your group study.
If you do not need the whole space, please be considerate of students using the space for studying and allow them to remain.
If no one has signed up, the room remains available for anyone to use as it normally is throughout the year. The room also remains available for normal use outside of the 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. reservation period.
Interview Rooms Specific Info:
Sunday, May 1 is the last day the interview rooms will be available as study spaces and they will only be available till 5 p.m. During the final exam period, Law ITC and the office of the Dean of Students reserve all the interview rooms. Only students with express permission may use the rooms during the exam period.
The SBA will monitor the rooms to ensure that the policies above are followed.
Representatives of Building Services, the SBA, and Building Security will monitor the interview rooms periodically throughout next week. We believe that opening up these rooms brings benefits to all our students. Please remain mindful of the policies above so this can continue in the future.
Special thanks to Dean Donovan and Dean Ballenger for helping making this possible.
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Extra Study Rooms Available for Finals!
The SBA has teamed up with Dean Donovan and Dean Bergen to open five of the Slaughter interview rooms for group study rooms Nov. 16-17, Nov. 28-30, and Dec. 2-3.
Please remember:
1. The rooms are for small group study only, not individual study. You must sign up with two or more people.
2. You may sign out a room for a maximum of 3 hours per day. The rooms must be vacated at 10:00pm every night.
3. You are responsible for cleaning the room when your time slot concludes.
4. Friday, December 3 is the last day the interview rooms will be available as study spaces. Law ITC and the office of the Dean of Students reserve all the interview rooms during the final exam period.
Sign up by clicking here. |
And We're Back...
Chris Martin - SBA President
As a teenager in Texas, I listened to sports talk radio station called “The Ticket.” At the beginning of every program, the hosts listed the topics to be covered—the Cowboys, the Rangers, the Longhorns—but they never made it through the categories they promised. Instead, the programming digressed into something totally unrelated to sports—inside jokes, concerts, attractive women. Invariably Dallas’s leading sports station would get distracted and miss the important sports stories that I had tuned in to hear about.
This is the time of year when we tune back in to law school. It is easily my favorite time of year here. We make plans with friends, review the courses we need to graduate and pursue our careers, and set goals for what we want to accomplish socially and academically. It’s a time of much hope and anticipation, and it’s all too easy to get distracted and miss out on the great opportunities the Law School affords us.
Here is a sample of the things I planned to do as a 1L but still have not: go fly-fishing with the Rod and Gun Club, advocate for refugees and migrant farm worker who find themselves in Charlottesville, teach a high school class with Street Law, attend one of Dean Ballenger’s etiquette dinners, take Corporations with Professor Geis and Federal Income Tax with Professor Yale (alright, I never really wanted to take Tax, but I should). As an eternally busy 3L, I am in very real danger of graduating without Corporations on my transcript, a working knowledge of fly-fishing, or any manners to speak of.
In this way, “The Ticket” is instructive to our law school experience. The tantalizing things right in front of us—too many bar reviews, excruciating exams, sleeping in for a change—can take over and use up all the time that we have, if we’re not careful.
Now that we’re back, we have a chance to take on meaningful roles within the Law
School and do the things we came here to do. If you are new to the Law School or
looking for ways to get involved, a great place to start is the SBA’s Student Activity Fair. You can see how your peers and predecessors are making a difference and entertaining themselves, and hopefully enjoy a pleasant Thursday afternoon in Spies Garden. I invite you to join the SBA and our 70+ student organizations in Spies Garden Thursday, September 2 from 4:30 to 6:00pm for the Student Activities Fair.
See you Thursday! Good luck this year. |
Puff Paint and Potential
Chris Martin - SBA President
My least favorite place when I was a child was Michael’s (the lifeless arts and crafts store, not the excellent bistro on the Corner). I spent hours among foam orbs, balsa wood, and decorative baskets from the world’s great sweatshops while my mother shopped for pieces of possible projects, most of which never progressed beyond the shopping stage. I sat bored in the shopping cart, with no toys or stimuli to capture my attention. Michael’s was a purgatory of potential, a shrine to what our home could be if my very accomplished mother was also Martha Stewart.
Over the past few months, I’ve had the opportunity to discuss the Student Bar Association with a number of fellow students, and I’ve come to realize that many of us see the SBA the same way I saw those ill-fated Michael’s trips. We do not credit the many ways that the SBA affects our law school life directly. We see a bunch of promises, pieces of projects, and false starts, instead of getting a clear picture of the many successful accomplishments and innovations of our student government. Many of us see a keg in Spies Garden most Thursdays as the pinnacle of SBA’s achievements.
Actually, the work of the SBA extends far beyond beer. I plan to dedicate this column in the coming year to the completed products and real accomplishments of the SBA. I hope this column will inform the student body of our efforts to make your UVA experience more fun and rewarding, and highlight the ways we have created opportunities for our students now and in the future. Additionally, I hope you will realize how possible it is to make small adjustments and pragmatic changes that can have a great impact on our school. In recent years, students have successfully lobbied to change library hours during finals, increased the number of recycling bins in the law school, and aired thousands of complaints about the parking meters. I encourage everyone reading this to pay attention to what we’re doing, and consider getting involved. In fact, we are accepting SBA committee chair applications now.
To begin as I intend to continue, I am pleased to announce our first SBA Open Forum on Monday, April 5 during our regular noon meeting time. There will be an open comment period and an opportunity to participate in the discussion and debate related to student comments. I hope many of you will bring your ideas, questions, and even grievances.
Also coming soon: special OGI panels for 1Ls preparing for the 2L interview season next fall. The SBA is teaming up with Career Services to help you prepare your strategy and target the career opportunities that will be the most relevant and rewarding for you.
Finally, this is my first SBA column for the Law Weekly, and I want to take this opportunity to say a few words about my predecessor and friend, Dan Rosenthal. I have had the pleasure of working with Dan quite a bit over the past 2 years and during the peaceful transition of power this month. Dan is leaving the SBA in a significantly better position than where it was when he took over. Beyond his encyclopedic memory bank of Robert Kennedy quotes, Dan has an amazing eye for detail that helped him balance our budget during unpredictably difficult financial times. Dan had to make more sacrifices than any SBA President in recent memory, but he did it all while staying intimately involved with the day-to-day life of the law school and providing excellent programming for our students. Dan is a passionate people person, and he is sincere in his commitment to helping others, whether it’s the residents of Charlottesville or the devastated families of Port au Prince. Dan was instrumental in leading our Law Hoos for Haiti initiative, and thanks to his efforts we raised over $15,000 (and counting). Dan has done an impressive job as SBA president, and I’m confident that he will be in the leadership of any group or organization he belongs to in the future.
To the outgoing members of the SBA, I have enjoyed working with each of you and I wish you well. Thanks for all your hard work. Between you and Dan, you have given us enormous shoes to fill.
To everyone else, I promise to never strand you on the glitter and puff paint aisle. I hope instead that we can work together to get some great things done. |
SBA Notebook: Fall Brings Service Options
By Dan Rosenthal '10
SBA President
The air is getting crisp, the leaves are changing color and you are spending far too much time trying to come up with a witty Halloween costume. Yes, it is October in Charlottesville! By the time you read this article, the Fall Picnic will have come and gone and the Yankee’s will, God willing, be on the march towards a 27th World Series title.
October is also a great month for events at the Law School. Here is a rundown of some of the happenings in and around the school over the next week.
As I have discussed in previous columns, the SBA has set a goal of providing 1,000 hours of public service for the Charlottesville community this school year. Accordingly, the SBA Public Service Committee is organizing our second Public Service Day of the year on Saturday October 17. Students will have the opportunity to: help build a house for a family in need with Habitat for Humanity, assist at soccer practice with the Special Olympics, lend a hand with repair work at a local group home for people with special needs with Arc of Charlottesville or cook dinner and socialize with children and their families who are staying at the Ronald McDonald House while being treated in local hospitals. If you are interested in participating in one of these activities, please email Peggy Nicholson at pn5z@virginia.edu.
Next week, the various Bar Review companies will be coming to the Law School to sign students up for their Bar Review courses. Tables will be set up in Hunton & Williams Hall throughout the week. The SBA will also be sponsoring an information session for 3Ls that will discuss key deadlines and information about the various state bar exams. This information session is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, October 21 at 11:30 a.m. in Caplin Auditorium.
If you are reading this on Friday, make sure you come to Rock-a-PILA tonight at Wild Wing Cafe. It should be a memorable evening, and how can you go wrong when judging your fellow classmates’ musical talents?
Finally, the SBA Graduation Committee is planning to hold the 3L Bonfire on Tuesday, October 27. There will be more details coming soon.
That’s about it for now. Got an idea for an issue you would like me to address in an upcoming column? Stop by the SBA office (SL 196e) and let me know. Have a great weekend.
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