UNC-Duke Final Four game impedes big assignment — so law students do what they do best - Raleigh News & Observer

It’s been a tough week for college basketball fans in North Carolina anxiously awaiting what The News & Observer has called “the biggest sporting event in the history of the state” as UNC prepares to take on Duke in the Final Four of the NCAA tournament — the first matchup of its kind in the schools’ long-standing rivalry.

But for a cohort of first-year law students at UNC, there was a larger dilemma at hand.

A looming deadline for a final major assessment worth 65% of their grade happens to fall exactly one day after the big UNC-Duke showdown. The date was set last summer, long before anyone could have known of this historic matchup, according to UNC Law Professor Rachel Gurvich.

The course is called Research, Reasoning, Writing, and Advocacy, or RRWA. More than 200 first-year UNC law students are spread out across 14 sections of the class, which is taught by eight different professors.

Gurvich told McClatchy News the spring semester just so happens to focus on writing trial and appellate briefs, which are used to try to convince the judge of a certain outcome for a client.

The students, fearing a disaster of epic proportions if the Final Four game and final due date were to proceed as planned, did what any good lawyer would do: ask for an extension — with a formal motion.

One of Gurvich’s students, Jess Errico, took it upon herself to draft a three-page memo, which starts by asking for either a 24-hour extension or, “in the highly likely event of UNC’s victory over Duke (“Dook”),” a full 48-hour delay.

She then pointed to a clause in the syllabus that states extensions may be granted when “something wild happens in the academic calendar,” such as snow days, personal illness and family emergencies. But without a formal definition of “something wild,” Errico argued, could it not also include a never-before-seen Final Four showdown between North Carolina and Duke?

Errico — who, it should be noted, was the student body president as an undergraduate at N.C. State University in 2018 — went on to cite an N&O article that described Duke and UNC’s 258th meetup as “bigger than all the previous times they’ve met.”

(Errico admits to being a Wolfpack fan at her core but said she’s “always ready to root for Carolina when NC State is not across the court!”)

And, as any true UNC fan would do, she made sure to replace all of the spellings of “Duke” with “Dook.”

“The undisputed evidence shows that the UNC and Dook Final Four NCAA match-up is ‘something wild’ because it has never occurred in the history of the great North Carolina rivalry,” Errico said.

She told McClatchy News she was just trying to “bring some levity to a long week” and used her study break to write the brief, which listed all of the RRWA professors as both defendants and judges in the case.

“I had mentioned it as a joke earlier in the week to a few friends, but the majority of my class didn’t know until after I had ‘filed’ my motion with the professors,” Errico said in an email.

According to Gurvich, she was “served” with the motion via email in the afternoon on Tuesday, March 29. Shortly thereafter, Gurvich received what’s known as a “friend of the court brief” from second-year UNC law student Adam Gillette.

“Adam is a former student of mine and friends with Jess,” Gurvich said. “I think he knew the professors would get a kick out of his amicus brief, and indeed we did.”

The amicus brief consisted entirely of a meme from ”Mad Men” featuring the incomparable Don Draper saying, “I’m watching the historic UNC/Dook Final Four matchup” in response to a question about his weekend plans.

Errico said Gillette has been a mentor throughout her first year of law school, and she sent him a copy of her brief both because she values his opinion and because she “thought he’d get a laugh out of it.”

The amicus brief, however, was all his idea.

Gurvich said “internal court deliberations are not typically matters of public record,” but she disclosed that the professors conferenced via email and had a decision for the students first-thing on Wednesday, March 30. Keeping with the mock case documents, the professors filed a formal court order complete with tiny basketball emojis.

“Upon consideration of the petitioners’ motions and for good cause shown, the Court hereby extends the deadline for the RRWA Spring 2022 Final Motion Memo,” the order states.

The new due date? Tuesday, April 5 at 11:59 p.m.

Errico, skeptical the joke motion would work, was still planning to have her assignment ready for the original deadline. But she said it was “particularly gratifying to see my professors run with the joke.”

“I think more than anything my peers have been laughing right alongside me at how the professors reacted,” Errico said. “We’re all of course relieved to have the extra time but have appreciated the opportunity to see law school be light-hearted for a change.”

Gurvich and fellow RRWA professor Sara Warf shared the saga in separate Twitter threads, calling it a testament to the humor of both their colleagues and students.

“I think this whole episode is a great example of teamwork and good humor, even across relationships we typically think of as involving an inherent power differential (e.g., professors and students),” Gurvich said in an email to McClatchy News. “It shows that, even in high-stress environments, students can ask for reasonable things, professors can grant reasonable requests, and we can all laugh together and create joy during a difficult time. Go Heels!”

Warf seconded the rallying cry for the Tar Heels and said professors “love seeing our students succeed.”

“If they do it while creatively implementing the skills we teach and simultaneously dunking on Duke, so much the better,” she said.

This story was originally published March 31, 2022 4:05 PM.

source: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article259974330.html

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