Online Competition: When Will Students Get Sent Home?


Drew Calamaro ‘21
Satire Editor

My fellow law students and COVID avoiders,

 

A storm is coming. A wave of undergrads is on the horizon and there is no end to their numbers in sight. Each vector comes from afar, bringing with them the many strains of COVID-19 (two—some would say two too many) that are spreading throughout the country. Of course, the school administration could choose to NOT do this, thereby protecting the student body and the city of Charlottesville as a whole, but here we are.

 

As a result, we have a situation where we all KNOW the school will go completely virtual at some point, but we don’t know when. Or maybe we do… Here at the Law Weekly, we believe everything should be made a game, and, to that end, we are providing a reward to the person who most accurately guesses the date and time at which an email will be sent out that entirely shuts down undergraduate classes.[1] Here are the rules:

 

Your guess: Go to lawweekly.org and click on the link to the Google survey (you must be logged into your UVA email to access).[2] You will be required to include your name and email, and others who fill out guesses will be able to see yours as well. You are warned. The tiebreaker, if needed, will be naming who sends out this email.

 

Deadline: Your answer must be sent by Sunday, Sept. 6, at 11:59 p.m.. This is a hard deadline.

 

Online shutdown event definition:  I will personally determine whether the email meets the definition of a full switch to online classes. Even if classes are not entirely online, I think we can agree that if the vast majority of classes become virtual, it counts. But it’ll be an “I know it when I see it” situation. Do I believe it should be a democratic process to determine if the email counts? No. Do you know why? Because I am the one organizing this.

 

Determination of closeness:  I will publish everyone’s guesses on a Google Sheets document, which you will be able to access. If the tiebreaker fails to establish a clear winner, we will hold a socially distanced footrace to determine the ultimate champion.

 

The prize:  A Dr. Ho’s Humble Pie gift card. I can promise you I did not pay for this, but the Law Weekly clearly has Bezos-level deep pockets. Maybe the true prize is the knowledge that at some point, you will be able to walk around Charlottesville without running into an infected undergraduate.

 

That’s it. Good luck, stay safe, and guess away!

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dac6jk@virginia.edu


[1] And sending undergrads back to the virtual realm where they belong.

[2] If you think this sounds like a naked attempt to garner clicks to our highly intuitive and advanced-looking website, then you think correctly. The Law Weekly must still drink at the fount of clicks for our affirmation.