LAW PROFESSOR BANS
LAPTOPS IN CLASS,
OVER STUDENT PROTEST

MEMPHIS (AP) — A group of University of Memphis law students are passing a petition against a professor who banned laptop computers from her classroom because she considers them a distraction in lectures.

On March 6, Professor June Entman warned her first-year law students by e-mail to bring pens and paper to take notes in class.

"My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing," Entman said Monday. [Sounds right. And raises the question of why anyone would attend such a class anyway. Just speak your lectures into a machine and let the students put it on their iPods.] "The computers interfere with making eye contact. You've got this picket fence between you and the students." [UD’s not sure about the picket fence image. After all, picket fences are something you lean against and talk over, whereas the screen of a laptop presents a professor with a black wall instead of a student’s face, and makes talking -- even eye contact, as this professor rightly notes -- very difficult.]

The move didn't sit well with the students, who have begun collecting signatures against the move and tried to file a complaint with the American Bar Association. The complaint, based on an ABA rule for technology at law schools, was dismissed. [Because the complaint is bogus. Why? Keep reading.]

"Our major concern is the snowball effect," said law school student Jennifer Bellott. "If you open the door for one professor, you open the door for every other professor to do the same thing." [This comment allows us to peek at the latent truth about all that fantastic in-class technology. If all right thinking people embrace it, why is this student afraid of a snowball effect among professors?]

"If we continue without laptops, I'm out of here. I'm gone; I won't be able to keep up," said student Cory Winsett, who said his hand-written notes are incomplete and less organized. [Someone should send Winsett’s comment to law firms looking to hire Memphis grads. Here’s a winner! Can’t even take hand-written notes in graduate school!]

Law School Dean James Smoot said the decision was up to the professor [That‘s why the complaint was bogus. The decision is up to the professor.], but the conflict has caused faculty to consider technology issues as the school prepares to move to a more advanced downtown facility in coming years.