I spend a lot of time on campus due to the gaps in between my classes and the various special events, but I try to avoid the West Bank (where the law school is) because of the depressing communist-chic architecture:
I spend a lot of time on campus due to the gaps in between my classes and the various special events, but I try to avoid the West Bank (where the law school is) because of the depressing communist-chic architecture:
The law school building contains brilliant people, but has the aesthetic appeal of a leaky basement. This is why so many of us sneak over to the business school, which has windows and a full-service Starbucks. Behold:
Usually the view is great, but today’s snowstorm makes the usual view of Downtown Minneapolis a little hard to see…
Downtown is still there, somewhere, sort of... but the snowed-out view is still preferable to the dungeon law school building.
Since the University is obligated by law1 to send an email about every robbery that happens near2 the towers, another crime alert graced our inboxes today:
On Friday, February 5 at approximately 12:30 a.m., a 19-year-old male who is not affiliated with the University of Minnesota was the victim of a robbery. The robbery occurred off-campus, but very close to the University’s West Bank campus.
The victim was near the intersection of Cedar Avenue South and Third Street South when five males exited a dark colored SUV and approached him. One of the suspects implied he had a gun, and the suspects threatened the victim and demanded valuables. After the victim handed over his wallet and cell phone, the suspects got back into the SUV and fled southbound on Cedar Avenue. The victim was not injured and was able to confirm that the SUV had a Minnesota license plate; however, he was not able to obtain the plate’s characters.
The five suspects are all described as black males between the ages of 18 and 21 who reportedly spoke with Somali accents. It should be noted that the suspect descriptions do not match the descriptions of the suspects involved in the robberies and shooting on and near campus on January 25.
As alluded to in the crime alert, other campus amusements include botched crime sprees with random shootings, biking gropers, shooting threats, riots, and of course, ominous young black men in dark clothes!
1 “This Crime Alert is sent in compliance with the federal Clery Act which requires universities to alert the campus community of crimes that may pose an ongoing threat to students and employees. For updates on any developments in this case, please visit the Crime Alerts page on the UMPD website.”
2 To be fair, this is even closer to the law school than it is to Riverside Plaza.
I am sitting in the e-commons1 between my international and corporate tax classes. I am halfway through the reading for my real estate seminar when this girl walks in and sits at my table.
She’s wearing a lime green Aéropostale jumpsuit with uggs, and is soaked (SOAKED!) in perfume. People around us look up. Some cough. I stifle a wretch.
My first impulse was to jump up and scream, “HARK! SHE’S TRYING TO KILL US ALL! MUSTARD GAS ATTACK! MUSTARD GAS ATTACK! BOO HAK-HAK-HAK!!” and then run out of the room with my arms flailing, …but that never goes well so I just sat there and tried to not vomit.
Later, as I walked to class, I realized that Rainbow Brite’s perfume was so strong that I now smelled like it. I was unamused.
Before I could get too hysterical about the involuntary perfuming, I ran into Sideshow Bob, the resident crazy-homeless person in the Westbank skyway. Bob sits around the skyway and heckles people or reads scripture. It is hard to focus on an involuntary perfuming when a toothless man is shouting the good-word in the hallway.
Sideshow Bob was still looming around the skyway’s convenience store when I returned later in the afternoon. But this time he found a chair and started chanting in Spanish. Si, si!
I think the key to school etiquette is not being distracting. I don’t want to be nasally assaulted by your cologne, harassed by your screaming of scripture, interrupted by your library phone calls, or bored by your in-class tangents. And this applies to the random homeless people, scantily clad undergrads, and yes, even law students.
1 The e-commons (essentials market commons) is a dimly lit cafeteria space in the westbank skyway. It is essentially a bunch of tables in a basement room where people study between classes.