De Minimis
  • Home
  • ABOUT US
  • Podcast
  • Your Learned Friend
  • Anonymous Feedback
  • Art
  • Get published!
  • Constitution
  • Archive
    • 2018
    • 2017
    • 2017 >
      • Semester 2 (Volume 12) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8 (election issue)
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
    • 2016 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 9) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
      • Semester 2 (Volume 10) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8 (Election Issue)
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
        • Issue 13 (test)
    • 2015 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 7) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
      • Semester 2 (Volume 8) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
    • 2014 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 5) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
      • Semester 2 (Volume 6) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 12
    • 2013 >
      • Issue 1
      • Issue 2
      • Issue 3
      • Issue 4
      • Issue 5
      • Issue 6
    • 2012 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 1) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
      • Semester 2 (Volume 2) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12

Alienation

29/7/2021

 
Volume 20, Issue 1
Gazza
Picture
As we all trudge back to another semester at the University of Zoom, it is okay to feel a little embittered. 

The solemn email we all received last week from the Provost relayed his ‘extreme  disappointment’ at the latest lockdown. The message, seeking to sympathise with both  domestic and international audiences, assured us of the University’s commitment  to its students. It was sent a couple of days after the notification about our student invoices. 

Well, Professor McCluskey, perhaps we might be forgiven for snarling at UniMelb’s professions of camaraderie. 

We are not all in this together. In fact, it’d be more apt to say that students and MLS have been pitted against each other by the pandemic. The University has flatly refused to cut fees, even for students who are literally not allowed into the country of their purported alma mater. What does it mean for your resume to proclaim ‘attended Melbourne Law School’? Frankly, a lot less than it used to, if attending Melbourne Law School means lying naked in your bed with undiagnosed depression, constantly checking that your camera is still off. 
I know it’s an easy applause line to criticise the uni, but that doesn’t mean it’s unwarranted, and frankly, it’s been a long time coming. Melbourne Law School has been leaning hard into its intangible benefits for a long time – the weight of its name, its collaborative learning environment, the access it provides to Australia’s foremost legal minds – and profiting handsomely. 

It’s become a bit of a joke. I’ve been here a long time, and I don’t think these selling points really lived up to what was delivered. All the pandemic has done is peel back the gilded veneer of MLS, and exposed its hard, avaricious superstructure. 

Even when we are on campus, our teachers reside behind locked doors, aloof and  inaccessible. Class discussions consisted of a cursory factual question occasionally thrown out, which the teacher then answers for themselves. Now, on Zoom, many teachers have given up on even asking questions.
 

That stale dynamic is the inevitable result of cramming forty-to-sixty students in a room, facing the same direction, or of only paying teachers for enough Zoom class time to blaze through the bare bones of the course material. Anyone claiming with a straight face that we are being given the best possible legal education is trying to sell you something. We are being sold a credential with rapidly falling market value, by a player with oligopolistic control. 

It is high time to reassess the fairy-tale we’ve all been sold, as the University steadfastly refuses to acknowledge reality. It is high time for all of us to insist, as we enter a fourth semester of online delivery, that this one-sided bargain be renegotiated. 
​
​

Gazza is a third-year JD student.
The views in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of De Minimis or its Editors.
Neoliberal nightmare
29/7/2021 06:55:47 pm

There is an overabundance of people wanting to study law in Australia so unimelb has no incentive to improve and every incentive to stuff the lecture halls (real or virtual) with as many students as possible.

Hardly avaricious
29/7/2021 07:40:06 pm

Last I checked, nobody’s forcing you to stay… Surely now you’ve stripped back the veneer of the junk-institution of Melbourne Law School, and it’s all the same anyway, you could shop around for a cheaper law degree?

Formatting Errors And Whether Materiality Applies To Error of Format
29/7/2021 10:19:15 pm

There are formatting errors in this piece.

"The message, seeking to sympathise with both domestic and international audiences, assured us of the University’s commitment
to its students. It was sent a couple of days after the notification about our student invoices. "

There are three double spaces in this passage. Can you spot all three?

b0b
30/7/2021 01:17:22 am

Who cares

GG
30/7/2021 08:46:08 am

It’s justified-style text formatting that fills the entire line. Most people know that.


Comments are closed.
    Picture

    Archives

    December 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014

  • Home
  • ABOUT US
  • Podcast
  • Your Learned Friend
  • Anonymous Feedback
  • Art
  • Get published!
  • Constitution
  • Archive
    • 2018
    • 2017
    • 2017 >
      • Semester 2 (Volume 12) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8 (election issue)
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
    • 2016 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 9) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
      • Semester 2 (Volume 10) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8 (Election Issue)
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
        • Issue 13 (test)
    • 2015 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 7) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
      • Semester 2 (Volume 8) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
    • 2014 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 5) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
      • Semester 2 (Volume 6) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 12
    • 2013 >
      • Issue 1
      • Issue 2
      • Issue 3
      • Issue 4
      • Issue 5
      • Issue 6
    • 2012 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 1) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
      • Semester 2 (Volume 2) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12