South Texas College of Law Annotations (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 22, No. 4, Ed. 1, February, 1994 Page: 3 of 12
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Page 3
February, 1994
Plain talk: Get your calendars ready
By CLINT E. JONES
SBA President
Well, I guess it is time to
welcome you back for another
fun filled semester at South
Texas. I hope each of you had a
wonderful break, but now it is
time to get back to such exciting
events as recitation, studying,
and, of course, Student Bar
Association activities. As most of
you will recall, we accomplished
a number of things this past fall.
But do not expect things to slow
down. What follows is a sum-
mary of some of the plans the
SBA plans to accomplish this
spring.
Intramurals: Intramural
basketball is already underway.
Our own Michael Jordans have
started hooping it up at St. Tho-
mas University's gym on Friday
evenings. As for golf, we plan on
hosting another tournament for the
students and the faculty on a
Saturday, probably in April.
Spring Break: After a
successful ski trip over the winter
break, we have decided to try to
organize a vacation trip over
spring break (March 13-19). This
will probably be a trip to one of
the beaches, with the highest
probability being somewhere in
Mexico. Our leader in this area,
Bill Rustam, will once again be in
charge of setting this up.
Elections: The election
committee has already met and
began discussions on how this
year's elections will be held.
There will be a number of
changes to the elections this year
to, we hope, improve the current
system. The elections will be
shortly after spring break, and I
will let you know more in the
next edition of Annotations.
Atrium Parties : We have
already hosted one atrium party
this semester, and you should
expect at least three more. The
success we experienced in the fall
with these parties should continue
in the spring.
continued on page 10
Top ten reasons you should take part
in intramural mock trial at STCL
By GARY T. LESTER
10. Improve the resume ~ even if
you never plan to litigate.
9. Meet other students; learn
teamwork.
8. Find out about trial advocacy:
Is it for you?
7. Test your persuasive skills;
they may actually improve.
6. Learn from doing: jump in,
look stupid, practice, feel better,
look good.
5. Kick some butt (maybe your
own).
4. Build self-confidence; amazing
how this helps your classroom
recitation and interviewing skills.
3. Meet practicing lawyers and
judges (MAKE CONTACTS) and
learn from them.
2. You get to ASK questions, not
answer them.
1. Have FUN!
How do you get started?
Sign up at BOA, get your team of
two student attorneys, two student
witnesses, one student timekeeper
and at least two practicing attor-
neys who will agree to be judges.
All teams get the same
case. Your team will represent the
plaintiff in one preliminary round
and the defendant in the other
preliminary round. Winning teams
advance to the next round. It's up
to your team to determine strat-
egy, but one attorney makes the
opening statement and the other
makes the closing argument. Each
attorney directs and cross-exam-
ines witnesses. Usually, attorneys
switch roles between rounds so
each gets to make at least one
opening and one close. Both
attorneys and witnesses are evalu-
ated by judges (but not the par-
ticular ones they recruited).
You say, "I haven't had
evidence." So what? You say,
"I'll look stupid." So what? You
think you haven't yet looked
stupid once in law school? That's
exactly why you should participate
— not to look stupid, but to throw
yourself into it; that fear of failure
will cause you to prepare and
learn and, as a result, you won't
look stupid and you will enjoy it.
You will learn from your own
hard work, from other more
experienced students and from the
judges.
More important, you will
benefit from the experience itself.
Even if you don't advance, you
will look forward to next semes-
ter, so you can kick some butt.
When it does arrive, you will
realize that "payback time" is not
continued on page 11
Hate speech:
Punishment
is no answer
By JIM BUSSIAN
Annotations columnist
Last November, Vincent Del
Piazzo, an assistant vice-chancellor
at the University of California at
Riverside, banished the Phi Kappa
Sigma fraternity from campus for
three years. Their offense: sporting a
T-shirt which portrayed a man
wearing a sombrero and clutching a
beer bottle, proffering the slogan, "It
doesn't matter where you come
from as long as you know where
you're going."
Although hate of Latino
students did not motivate the
fraternity' s decision to print that shirt,
racist, sexist and otherwise offensive
attitudes do exist on the campuses of
higher education. However, it is
time for public colleges and univer-
sities to shelve the policies of
Political Correctness and open a
new book on how to deal with hate.
During the 1970'sand
1980's, minority enrollment in public
universities increased significantly.
Complaints of racism and harassment
rose during that period as well.
Today, about one-quarter of all
minority students report having
experienced prejudice, according to
a recent study published by the
Freedom Forum First Amendment
Center at Vanderbilt University. In
response to these startling statistics,
many state supported colleges and
universities have adopted policies
that, in general, penalize those who
stigmatize or victimize an individual
on the basis of race,
continued on page 10
South Texas College of Law
OFFICIAL CLASS RING
HERFF JONES
RAY BRANCH & ASSOCIATES
701 Sharon Lane
Baytown, Texas 77251
Office
(713) 383-2006
(713) 839-1153
flay Branch — STCL Rep.
Announcements, Certificates of Appreciation,
Mugs available on special order days
for graduates
★★★★★★★
Note:
Other styles are
available; call
for ordering
information &
current pricing.
APARTMENTS
Washing to
tfemonai
Club
Downtown
Memorial Drive
Inner Loop Living
adjacent to Memorial Park
* From $ 405
* 9 month leases available
* 5 minutes to the College
* 1 block to Memorial Park
* Completely renovated
* Limited access gates
* Fitness center with stair-climber
* Valet laundry service available
* Door-to-door trash pick-up
* 2 pools
* "Custom" units available
Call for our Special Offer (713) 864-7312.
904 Westcott, Houston, Texas 77007
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Piller, Ruth. South Texas College of Law Annotations (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 22, No. 4, Ed. 1, February, 1994, newspaper, February 1994; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth144497/m1/3/: accessed April 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting South Texas College of Law.