A Simple Gesture
Convincing Disillusioned Students
By Brian 1.. Buckley
It has been a recent trend in academia to seek
more fruitful sources of motivation for students
than those typically offered. Although this inclination is well intentioned, it is open to the charge
that it represents the proverbial changing of
horses in midstream. Teachers for years have
sought to motivate students to study, to read and
to learn by trying, at least, to impress on them
the value of knowledge. Indeed, so desperate have
some teachers become that they have turned from
emphasizing the value of the goal sought to stressing the sanctions to be imposed for failure to seek
it; this creates in some students an unnecessary
antipathy towards education in general. All of
this is merely to say that when those who purport
to educate you lose .your confidence in the sincerity of their goal,' something has gone awry.
What does this mean for students at MarshallWythe?
Brian Buckley, Editor-in-Chief, Amicus Curriae,
19'1'1-'18, B.A. Dartmouth College, 19'16, J.D. expected 19'19.
afford everything, so we get what we can afford,"
it might be answered. I may it might be answered,
because when I asked, in an editorial in the law
school newspaper, why the library didn't carry
these journals, the silence was deafening.
It means, as I will try to explain, that we need
a little more attention paid to the Marshall-Wythe
law library by people in responsible positions. Law
students are no different, in the important respects, from students in general. They need and
want the best educational tools available, if not
specifically to acquire knowledge then at least to
avoid the immediate results of a failure to acquire
it. Our library falls short in this regard and it is
offered as an example of this deficiency that we
do not even carry a subscription to the Wall Street
Journal or the New York Times. The answer that
students ought to carry personal subscriptions if
they want these materials is deceptive because the
purpose of the library is to provide students with
these types of educational materials. "We can't
Some students argue that the library cannot
keep more materials on hand because there is no
room for them. This is perhaps a better answer.
In January and February one of the two reading
rooms in the library was closed to students so that
construction workers could convert part of it into
another office. One student compared the attendant noise to the Richmond Symphony Orchestra
Percussion Section during a practice session.
During this time, the entire first year class was
working on its first large writing assignment. It
was an inexcusable mess and only continuous and
vocal student protest put an end, temporarily, to
the construction. Some of these students were disillusioned and how can they be blamed? In 1775,
four years before the law school was founded,
Samuel Johnson asserted that "a man will turn
over half a library to make one book." Whether
that man would do the same for an office is questionable at best. What is not questionable, however, is that the students at Marshall-Wythe deserve greater consideration, in terms of library
planning, in the future.
The new law school is still two years away,
people are fond of saying. It doesn't take that
long to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. A
simple gesture such as purchasing that subscription could go a long way towards convincing the
disillusioned students that our teachers are interested in educating us.
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