 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Welcome Message from the President
|
No Let Up
The euphoria of the first graduation didn't last long. On February 2, 1976, I received the official copy of the Coco team's inspection report. I immediately poured over it, making marginal notations whenever prompted by a spike of my blood pressure.
The thirty-nine page document was rife with innuendo, misstatements, false assumptions, and arrogant accusations. Concluding that Cooley was not in compliance with ABA accreditation standards, the inspectors took it upon themselves to pronounce a death sentence for the school. On page 33, they concluded:
"This institution has a fatal long-term budgetary flow [flaw?] which appears unlikely at this time to allow it ever to aspire to any more than a marginal operation as a private law school. Unless it can obtain substantial additional resources, it will not be in a position to provide a sound legal education. Its most pressing financial needs, as pointed out in the report, are for faculty, library, physical plant, retirement of debts, student aid, and special functions such as placement and CLE. [Continuing Legal Education] The litany of needs is long, and the report details out each area."
Their animosity toward me was palpable. After noting that my salary was higher than most law school deans, they opined:
"We are concerned that Cooley might be non-profit in the legal sense without being non-profit in a educational sense."
Whatever that might be. They added:
"We must state that, to our knowledge, no other institution is so heavily controlled by its dean."
Of course, they had to concede that under ABA rules, the division of authority between the dean and the faculty was entirely optional for each school. Still they thought it a point of criticism that I was so much in charge.
One of the inspectors' recommendations sounded an ominous note:
"In reference to consultants, the school should invite consultants experienced in legal education to advise the administration and faculty about matters such as curriculum, programs, faculty recruiting, etc."
That bit of advice echoed a not-so-subtle suggestion by one of the inspectors, made privately to a member of our board of directors, that he was available to consult with the school for a reasonable fee, plus expenses.
As negative as the Coco team's report was, it did not recommend lifting our provisional approval. The conclusion was:
"We hereby recommend that full ABA approval be denied at this time; that provisional approval as granted by the ABA [in] February 1975 continue provided substantial effort is demonstrated by Cooley on or before the next scheduled ABA inspection, that it has corrected most of the deficiencies written in this team's report."
I fired off a four page response on February 5. In it, I addressed, item by item, and page by page, the false statements, misleading comments, baseless innuendos and unsupported opinions which riddled the report.
I concluded by renewing a request that Jim White had denied previously. I wrote:
"We would hope that next year's inspection team will be more impartial; and to that end, we will insist upon an invitation being extended to our State Board of Law Examiners to participate in the visitation as required by ABA procedural rules and HEW criteria."
The participation of any state agency having jurisdiction over a law school in its accreditation inspections was expressly required by ABA rules. That didn't phase Professor White. He blithely informed me that the requirement only applied to the state of New York, even though there was no such restriction in the rule. It was an explanation better suited to dialog from Alice in Wonderland than to a communication between two lawyers.
On February 24, Jim White sent me a copy of the final draft of the Coco Committee's inspection report. Despite my detailed objections and corrections and thirteen pages of similar protests from our faculty, not a word of the report was changed. Jim White's letter went on to say that the report had been routinely considered at a February 11-15 meeting of the Accreditation Committee and the Council of the Section of Legal Education.
I thought it curious that, while he referred to meetings of the committee and the council some ten days before his letter, he made no mention of what, if anything, had been decided. I suppose I just assumed that 'routine consideration' would probably result in routine adoption of the recommendation of the inspection team.
In dealing with the ABA, I experienced many surprises. This time, I was in for a real shock.
Admissions | Financial Aid | Academics | Grand Rapids Campus | Rochester/Oakland Campus
Library | Bookstore | Information Technology | Clinical | Career Services
Faculty | Students | Alumni | News & Events | Overview | Search Cooley | Contact Us
This Page was last updated on:
08/19/2004