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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

Law Students at a proper Law School /= "University Students"

Law students are both sensitive and not. I remember many times students crying while we discussed cases of rape, child murder and domestic violence. As one prof pointed out: "We have over 100 people in the room. Statistically speaking we must have many rape victims, and more than a few perpetrators."

Students cried, but they certainly did not suggest that topics not be taught. Students at professional schools (law/medicine etc) have committed to a profession with a known body of knowledge developed over hundreds, arguably thousands of years. They would not want that very expensive education to be curtailed for the very modern concept that is political correctness.

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Well you say that but then you get Maternal Fetal Medicine specialists suing to opt out of learning how to perform safe abortions because of their political beliefs.

I am less bothered by them choosing not to do them once qualified than not even learning how to do it. There are times when an emergency abortion can save a woman's life and sure it's not likely there's no one around to do it in 2015 USA but what about in an emergency? A power cut after hurricane etc?

Several of my wife's colleagues have done this. It shocks me.

I graduated lawschool only 2 years ago, has it really changed to the point where people would cry in class? I did go to a school that required work experience, so the class was mostly above 24, maybe that made it different.

I graduated 10+ years ago.

The first tears I remember appeared in the first couple crimlaw lectures. I won't go into the facts, but it was a discussion of Keeler (2 Cal.3d 619) that ramped up the emotions for some.

Take any law class. A hundred adults in their mid twenties in one room. That's fifty females. Chances are that at least one of them is pregnant, probably more than one. And there are plenty of parents of both genders. Nobody thinks less of them for being a little more emotional than the norm when forced to addresses certain cases. Nor would they expect the curriculum to be altered.

Yet at my law school, there was an unspoken rule in our criminal law classes that the exams would never have a fact pattern invoking sexual assault, for the obvious reasons. Perhaps the truth is always more nuanced than what is being said here.

After one assignment that involving stadiums, there was an unwritten rule at my school that exams would not rely on students knowing anything about american baseball teams.

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