Basking in the Glow

On Friday the Commercial Law Department had a farewell party for me. They invited the Property Department, too, which I thought was especially nice – people from different departments here hardly ever interact. Both groups had signed cards and bought me gifts (a rimu serving board and two lovely NZ picture books), and when Mike made his speech (inviting me back any time), Janet presented me with a gorgeous bouquet of pink roses.

Then, on Sunday, Marnie (the course coordinator for COMLAW 101) had a dinner “for just the stage one people.” I had been feeling kind of bad because Ali was in Seattle without me, eating Aaliyah’s wonderful Indian cooking. (On top of that I've been missing dinner parties with Ashish & Anjali in SF, so am experiencing major curry deficit just now.) Marnie has been married to an Indian from Fiji for more than 20 years and made a wonderful Pacific Indian dinner complete with fresh rotis. Even though most of the people in the department have been working together for years, turns out it was the first time they’d all gotten together for dinner at someone’s house. I was glad to be the excuse, and we all had a great evening.

Even after all that celebrating, last night I managed to finish marking all 737 exams – hallelujah!!! (I would have finished on Sunday, but someone had taken the final box I needed home over the weekend.) I’ve estimated the grading itself only took about 30 hours, but the process takes much longer because your brain just turns to mush after a while. By the third day I was getting punchy and started giggling like a crazy person whenever I looked at the box of scribbles waiting for me, so I started taking longer breaks.

Students pass if they get 50% correct, and it was made clear that I should be “generous,” so I was. Even so, 36% of the class failed, while 37% got Cs, 21% got Bs, and 6% got As (they don’t give Ds here). At first I thought this was pretty bad, but when I checked the “expected” grade distribution, it was only off by a few points - not quite as many As & Bs as there should have been, but exactly the right amount of Cs. Plus, I counted the 17 students who even didn’t attempt the question as “failing,” but I think the department actually has a different category for them. If so, my grades are almost exactly in line with expectations. Talk about soft bigotry.

Lots of students wrote crap answers because they didn’t read the problem carefully and, of course, some of them were so laughably wrong they were actually good entertainment. (My favourite said J, the character in the problem, broke the law because he was both the owner and the seller of a piece of property.) However, considering how difficult the course is (some of which is quite unnecessary and due to certain ego clashes at the faculty level, but I digress), and the fact that a huge portion of the class are not native English speakers, many students did remarkably well.

In the meantime, I’ve been fielding heaps of questions from Company Law students – their exam is tomorrow. That’s actually been quite rewarding, too, in part because the students are so grateful. A couple of young women even gave me a scarf yesterday!

I thought helping them learn was just part of the job, but not everyone sees it that way. John, the Company Law coordinator, complains that answering students' emails takes too much time. I think John's a good guy, and we've worked together very well on this course. But he comes in well past 9, is often gone by 3, and in between he's outside smoking almost as much as he's in his office. And the other person teaching Company Law is the worst. Yesterday he posted the following announcement:

SPECIAL RESOLUTION VERSUS S 122 RESOLUTION
I have had many questions regarding this. Either you did not attend the lecture where I discussed this or were not taking notes! it is really simple:

1.The two are different things. Either you have a meeting which means people turn up or DONT have one and INSTEAD circulate a written resolution.
2.For a special res. need 75% of votes of shareholders (1 share= 1 vote so depends how many shares those present hold) PRESENT AND VOTING ONLY. That is shares held by those not present don't count (unless they have appointed proxy). As long as there's a quorum meeting can vote even if a small number of shareholders turn up. Note the 75% can be increased in the constitution but not reduced.
3. For a s 122 written resolution instead of a meeting you need 75% as above AND 75% of the actual shareholders to sign as well. This effectively limits it to small companies (imagine getting 75% of telecom's shareholders to approve something hundreds of thousands of signatures will be needed).
4. you can use s 122 to pass either a special or ordinary resolution but becuase of the above requirement any such resolution will automatically meet the special resolution one anyway.

Hope this helps expalin it. if you are STILL confused then I am sorry there is nothing more i can do
G****

It's that last line that really gets me. While I agree the issue is not particularly difficult, it is quite technical and therefore tricky for anyone who is new to the rules, i.e., students. I don't think G's explanation is especially clear - perhaps why he's getting so many questions? - or well written. But it's his petulance I find inexcusable. I would never dream of writing like this to a single student, much less to the entire class. And so it dawns on me why the students have been so . . . appreciative.

Cheers,
Sandie