Marquette Pride

I wanted to start by saying thank you for having me as a student blogger for the last month of this school year. I look forward to writing some thought provoking—yet fun—posts. That being said, I wanted to start with a short post of thanks and congratulations to a certain group of individuals that might not be directly related to “the law,” but still deserve some recognition for their achievements this year. Cheers to you, Coach Buzz Williams and the Marquette men’s basketball team. Wooohoo! What a season.

Now, I understand as law students that not everyone loves basketball or even Marquette for that matter. Everyone has their own interests and fun activities outside the reading and outlining we do daily (ahh, “weekly” sounds more accurate for myself). Additionally, I know everyone went to excellent undergraduate schools and most of you have strong ties to their sports programs. That being said, give credit where credit is due. As Marquette Law Students we still function as members of the Marquette student body, and therefore, should be proud of what the men’s basketball team did this season.

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Property: Cat or Car, Pug or Rug?

He fell on hard times. He lost his job, then his home. His only option was to move into a homeless shelter. But he had two dogs he loved and could not bear to give them up. His dogs started off luckier than he did. Instead of surrendering them to a humane society and having to be split up and placed in new homes, he found the only place in southeast Wisconsin that would be able to spare them – a fledging organization known as “Keep Your Pets, Inc.”

Keep Your Pets, newly founded, is a safety net for pets and owners for crisis management. The concept is to provide temporary housing for pets, mostly dogs and cats, when their owners cannot provide for them. It may be due to illness, relationships with abuse, economic issues, accidents – there are many scenarios, some we can even imagine we could find ourselves in. But the outcome of this type of event has been tragic, until now. The typical options for pet owners are surrendering to a shelter (and usually not getting the pet back without lying to the shelter staff), pawning them off on friends, or euthanasia.

So, he found this option, and his two dogs were spared. Until his luck turned bad again.

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Israel Reflections 2013–The Golan Heights

This year traveling up to the Golan Heights was a little more fraught with tension – after all, UN peacekeepers had been held for three days by Syrian rebels and the Syrian civil war made the historically quiet area more active. It also ended up being the location of one of the most amazing learning experiences of the trip. To put this all in perspective, student Katie Lonze shares her experience from both 2011 and 2013:

Two years ago, I was part of a group of about 30 law students from Marquette University and Arizona State University that traveled to Israel over spring break to learn about International Conflict Resolution and the various attempts at peacemaking in the Middle East. As a first-year law student, not enrolled in the class, I came into the trip with a less than fully developed understanding of the issues going on in the Middle East (which of course assumes that it is possible to have a fully developed understanding of the region.) This past week I was fortunate to return to Israel with 32 students and four faculty members from Marquette. The return trip was an entirely different experience, thanks to both the wealth of knowledge I obtained the first time and to my continuing interest in learning about past and current events in the Middle East. 

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