<p>The putz who sent this letter to his students post-Katrina before the water was pumped out of NOLA, the dead counted, or the lights turned back on wasted no time in floating his own resume.</p>
<p>When all was said and done what really mattered to the dean wasn’t his students but rather his paycheck and the university’s ability to cover it. Good riddance to bad rubbish and good luck Indiana Law School.</p>
<p>Let me qualify. I can well understand a lawyer who doesn’t care about his client. The law is an adverrsarial process and you needed like nor respect the person you are representing to do your job. Even a total scum is entitled to legal representation and our system of justice plain wouldn’t work if a lawyer interjected his personal feels and standards into a case.</p>
<p>However a law professor is in a somewhat different line of work. Just as we expect a doctor to put the welfare of his patient above his or the hospital’s bottom line so too we expect a professor to have responsibilities to his students. That is one of the reasons why we give them tenure isn’t it? I mean a law school that failed noone and gave everyone high marks would likely have a better bottom line, at least until the students all flun ked the Bar and realized they had been bilked out of their tuition.</p>
<p>But then maybe I am just a little old fashioned. Heck I don’t even think it makes sense to screw yolur customers in the long run which probably explains why I’m not rich.</p>
<p>Anyway there are some bad doctors out there as well but I don’t think they usually set out to kill you unless it is close to their tee off time. Ben Franklin nailed the species when he said the doctor prolongs the cure to increase the fee.</p>
<p>He’s not really a “lawyer” in the way the term is generally used. And I’m really not seeing what was so reprehensible. Was he just supposed to let the law school literally die? I know a few Tulane students and none of them have complained about this.</p>
<p>Maybe no Tulane law students complained to you, but I certainly read some bitter complaints at the time. </p>
<p>I don’t know what he should have done. I do know the medical school at Tulane did not have the same problem. It moved en masse to Texas for two semesters. Nobody had to endure doing their 1L in two back to back 9 week semesters or move back to NOLA for their final semester. But the important thing is Dean Roberts got paid for the classes he didn’t teach right?</p>
<p>So you don’t know what he should have done, but you know what he did was wrong? You realize they were paying tuition to Tulane anyway, and having them back would certainly have cost the school more than letting them stay at other schools, right? </p>
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<p>Well, no, the important thing is that Tulane’s law school didn’t die completely, the way the engineering school did. I’m also pretty sure the undergrads had to come back, and the other schools wouldn’t have let them stay or transfer anyway. I really doubt the decision made a bit of difference to Roberts financially, so I can’t see what your problem is.</p>
<p>“You realize they were paying tuition to Tulane anyway, and having them back would certainly have cost the school more than letting them stay at other schools, right?”</p>
<p>No what I know is that the tuition money was going to Tulane while these students visited at other schools but that these other schools would not continue remitting the tuition to Tulane for the Spring semester. Or at least that is what Dean Roberts says in his letter.</p>
<p>As for the Engineering School it did not die. It was killed. Per the Tulane Provost (who also floated his resume in the midst of this crisis and also fled to greener pastures) the decision to close the Engineering School was NOT based on the money it would save but rather strategic considerations. The same was true with the closure of Newcomb College.</p>
<p>My problem with Dean Roberts is I think a person who takes money for services he doesn’t deliver knowing it will work a financial hardship on the people from whom he is taking the money and justifies it on the basis of his greater need is a crook with the conscience of a Russian pimp.</p>
<p>If Roberts was so selflessly concerned with the welfare of the school he subsequently left perhaps he should have forgone his own paycheck. But hey that’s just me.</p>
<p>What services is he not providing? Do you honestly think he made even one extra cent from this decision, which probably wasn’t even his in the first place? Do you think Tulane Law would have been better off with no students but having him give back his salary? This is just such a bizarre, outlandish attack.</p>
<p>Ah classes for one thing. Isn’t that what you usually get in return for tuition.</p>
<p>Yes you are right it probably wasn’t his idea. Is that a legal defense in your state? “It wasn’t my idea to shoot the clerk. I just rifled the register.” I guess if you are from La it might be given the paucity of murder convictions vis a vis the homicide rate.</p>
<p>What is bizarre in my estimation is thinking that the future and financial stability of a legally chartered nonprofit corporation - a scrap of paper is more important than the people it was chartered to serve. Refresh my memory here - what is Tulane’s motto? Non Sibi Sed Suis? I thought that translated as “not for one’s self, but for one’s own” but then my Latin was never very good so I probably have it backwards.</p>
<p>Dean Roberts is probably a great guy as long as you don’t have to share a life raft with him. When the crunch came the folks who run Tulane jettisoned tenured faculty, students, staff, history, research, and anything else they could lay their hands on except their own pay checks. OK I can understand that we are all human, but where Roberts went over the line is when he said in that letter - I am screwing you, I know I am screwing you, I don’t care, and you will thank me when it is over.</p>
<p>Uh, they did have classes. That’s what they brought them back for. I guess he did have the gall to suggest (although, again, not his decision) that Tulane students should attend Tulane, rather than have the school wither and die. Still not clear what exactly was so horrible.</p>
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<p>Yeah, what kind of a monster would temporarily inconvenience students just so the school would survive? I’m surprised he wasn’t arrested. I’ll bet he engineered the whole hurricane just to make a buck, even though it’s still really not clear how he gained even a little bit from any of this. And of course he should have been content to remain deputy dean forever (and for no pay) rather than become dean at a better school, because only scum-sucking lawyers ever take better jobs.</p>
<p>I think higherlead is just posting inflammatory material in hopes of provoking a response. I am going to ignore him in this thread in hopes of denying him the attention he seems to be craving.</p>
<p>People hate lawyers for a variety of reasons. </p>
<p>I remember reading a depo transcript in which a guy stated that he had dreamt about burying me up to my head and sand, and driving a tank over my head, after I had sued him for making middle-of-the-night phone calls to my clients, threatening to kidnap their children.</p>
<p>I didn’t lose any sleep over his hatred for me, any more than I will lose sleep over your unconsidered opinion that lawyers sui generis are odious, or that the tooth fairy brings quarters, or whatever other truths you hold to be self evident. Rant away.</p>