Teaching, Technology, and Eckstein Hall

There is convergence of ideas about teaching and technology around the Law School lately. The Law School is holding idea sessions as part of our strategic planning process.  A significant part of the discussion involves teaching: effectiveness, learners, full and part-time education.  Earlier this week Douglas Fisher published an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on “flipping” his database course at Vanderbilt. Flipping a course refers to taking the in-class lecture component and moving it to an online component, usually accomplished by recording the lecture. Earlier this summer I attended a presentation by Professor Norman Garland (Southwestern School of Law) who flipped his Evidence course and reported on the process and results. These threads all come together this week for me.

We haven’t flipped any classes here but we have blended (a term Garland prefers to flipping) a few. Some MULS faculty have been long time adopters of technology both in the classroom and outside. Many have electronic course pages, electronic supplements, electronic casebooks, and even video webcasts of course supplements. Several faculty here have blended some of their traditional in-class instruction with required out-of-class viewing of lectures. The MULS faculty who have blended their classes use the out-of-class lecture to establish the basics of the topic, which means in-class instruction can focus less on establishing the topic and more about exploring its nuances and its applications.

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Remembering Marquette Football

Today (Nov. 13) is the 52nd anniversary of Marquette’s final varsity football game. The tradition-ending contest pitted Marquette against the University of Cincinnati Bearcats before a crowd of 13,000 at the long-disappeared Marquette Stadium at Merrill Park on November 13, 1960.

Marquette had begun the 1960 football season with great enthusiasm. After losing the first seven games of the 1959 season, the rebuilding Warriors won their final three games with victories over North Dakota State, Cincinnati, and Holy Cross. In the three games, Marquette outscored its opponents, 113-46.

The 1960 season began with more successes, as Marquette defeated Villanova 23-13 at home in the season opener and then travelled to the West Coast where it blanked Pacific, 20-0.

However, the winning streak came to an end the next week in Madison when the Warriors fell to the Badgers 35-6. (Marquette played Wisconsin 28 times in football over the years, and, somewhat bizarrely, all 28 games were played in Madison. In those games, Marquette was only 4-24, raising questions as to who did the scheduling in those days.)

Marquette returned to its winning ways the following week when it eked out a 13-12 home victory over arch-rival Boston College.

However, after the BC Game, the Marquette train slid off the rails. A road trip by the heavily favored Warriors to Bloomington, Indiana, to play the winless University of Indiana resulted in a 34-8 defeat.

The return home the following Saturday witnessed a 23-6 loss to Vanderbilt, another winless team. (Although to be fair to Vanderbilt, three of the Commodores losses at that point were to Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida who finished the season ranked #2, #9, and #18 in the AP poll. The remaining loss was to Georgia, which lost only to Alabama, Florida, nationally ranked Auburn, and the University of Southern California in 1960. Even fifty years ago, the Southeastern Conference was a dominant league.)

A subsequent two-week road trip resulted in upset losses to Detroit Mercy and Holy Cross and ended the possibility of the school having its first winning football season since 1953. Sportswriters blamed the downward spiral on the erratic play of the team’s three quarterbacks and its general lack of speed.

In its season’s ending game with Cincinnati, Marquette faced a team with an identical record (3-5), an even longer losing streak (five games versus four), and a nearly identically named coach. (Marquette was coached by Lisle Blackbourn and Cincinnati by George Blackburn, who had already been told that he would not be the coach in 1961.)

Although the Associated Press made Cincinnati the favorite, the Milwaukee Journal predicted a victory for the home-standing Warriors.

Alas, it was not to be. Marquette star halfback Dave Thiesen was injured early in the game, and his replacements could not pick up the slack, as the home team managed only two first downs in the opening half. Meanwhile, Cincinnati raced to a 19-0 halftime lead.

Although the Marquette defense shut out the Bearcats in the third quarter, and the Marquette offense twice drove inside the Cincinnati 10-yard line, the Warriors could not cross the Bearcat goal line. (In an era of one-platoon football, starters played both offense and defense, and if taken out of the game could not return until the next quarter.)

In a more wide-open fourth quarter, both teams put two touchdowns on the board, with the final Marquette touchdown scored by end George Andrie, later an NFL All-Pro with the Dallas Cowboys. The final score was Cincinnati 33, Marquette 13.

Of course, no one on November 13, 1960, knew that this would be the last Marquette football game ever. With only eight seniors on the 1960 squad, and with both Thiesen and Andrie returning, the prospects for a winning season in 1961 seemed quite favorable. On December 1, 1960, the team held its final meeting of the fall and elected captains for the next season.

The fateful announcement came nine days later on December 9, 1960, when the Rev. Edward J. O’Donnell, the president of Marquette since 1948, declared an immediate end to Marquette football. There would be no 1961 season.

When the announcement came without warning, it shocked the Marquette football team, the Marquette campus, and Marquette fans everywhere, some of whom have not recovered to this day.

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Restorative Justice and Mediation in Ireland

I have the privilege this week of serving as the keynote speaker at the annual Irish Mediator’s Institute conference in Dublin, Ireland. I will talk to this professional mediation organization about the incorporation of restorative justice principles into high emotional conflicts. In this time of family, community, political, national, and international conflict and discord, the principles of restorative justice that call all of us to truly listen to those with whom we disagree, so that we can better understand the deep harm we are inflicting by our name-calling and demonizing others, can help us to recognize our shared humanity and a path to building peaceful relationships.

I will have no shortage of examples of the harm caused by our angry divisions. Whether I talk about the American presidential race, the continuing conflicts in Northern Ireland, or the harm caused by the BBC’s alleged cover-up of sexual abuse claims against a popular children’s television star, the harm has rippled out to affect thousands of people. From the family level to international relations, we see much abusive and threatening language being used instead of people sitting down and respectfully listening to each other’s perspectives and concerns. So many of us speak and act in anger without thinking about the harm that we can cause others by our actions. Restorative justice calls us to reflect about who is being harmed and to identify the nature of that harm and then to work on bringing healing to the people who have been affected.

At the Law School, my students and I have been a part of victim/offender dialogue sessions in which murderers and rapists sit down with their victims (or family members of their victims) to have exceedingly difficult conversations. These meetings always occur because a victim has made a request for that meeting. What we routinely experience is that even with people who have suffered the deepest harm, victims find some peace in having these very difficult conversations. Offenders can answer questions, express their deep remorse, and acknowledge (often for the first time) the incredibly profound harm they have caused. Victims (or survivors as many like to be called) are able to give voice to the devastation they have suffered, get answers to questions that were never addressed in the judicial system, and find some peace in the offender’s apology. Offenders routinely report that they believe answering the victims’ questions is the best thing they have ever done for someone else.

I have seen restorative justice work in almost every setting where this is conflict. The processes do not “solve” every problem, but it reminds the participants that we are all part of a human family. What we do and say matters and can cause harm or bring great joy to others. The way out of our pain and anger is not to lash out but to listen to each other “with out hearts as well as our heads.”

It will be a wonderful experience to work with the Irish mediators and to explore with them how they can incorporate restorative justice into their work.

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