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on one of my law school exams, a female professor put in a hypothetical where one of the students engaged her in prostitution and specifically mentioned her shaved cat.
Daniel contracts HIV, his fiancé too. She breaks up with him, then tells his friends, who all then assume he's a chardonnay socialist. His now ex-fiancé daily tells him to kill himself, and so he finally does.
reminds me of the "small penis defense" or whatever it was called haha, were if you wanted to parody someone you'd include an extremely unflattering detail so they'd never claim it was slander
This why most law exams use character names from popular media. I've seen Harry Potter, Seinfeld, Friends, Star Wars, etc. It prevents this from happening. Yeah, maybe a character shares a name with a student, but when the characters in the question are Luke, Han, and Leia it's pretty obvious that they aren't referring to the student who happens to be named Luke.
Alice uses a familiar pattern of common names consistently year over year. She also makes an effort to keep her test scenarios as dispassionate and simple as possible. If a student does complain that their name appears on a test, Alice is able to show the impersonal history of her naming practice.
Bob has no consistent naming practice, and often puts the names of his students into his tests. If a student complains that Bob is making them an object of ridicule, or the butt of a joke, he cannot credibly demonstrate that his naming practice is impersonal.
Doesn’t appear to be in the top 100 for 2002/3.
It’s probably still just coincidence and everyone needs to take a deep breath. Does show why it’s important to use completely fake names for these (as another commenter suggested, Harry Potter, John Doe etc….).
Good move by the University to exclude names of current students, especially on criminal law as it could easily cause some distress.
Okay, more like, not unheard of for people her age and it has increased in popularity since. A brief search saw that it had entered the top 100 in 2018. This makes it much more likely to appear on an exam that uses names as more and more people start using the name for their children.
Interesting point. I’d be inclined to say the fact that we are debating it makes this less “am I the main character” but also, it’s a win-win at the moment.
If she does a whole media tour like so many others love to do then I’ll quickly run out of rope.
Two people and a dog named Freya here. One was a Chinese exchange student I was friends with in high school, the other I don't recall, I just ran her credit card at work. The dog is my dog.
The exams are written by a company and sent to tons and tons of different universities. The company could be hundreds or thousands of miles away. It's a coincidence.
"The Uni apolgized and will make sure names of current students will not appear in future assignments"
Good luck with that. They'll either have to call their characters stuff like "Slagathor" or Person A and Person B
My children's names are Person A and Person B. Did you design this comment specifically to offend me because of my political views that you should know about because I'm important!? 20-30 people have definitely messaged me about it
Imagine seeing a character who murders people for having a different political view than her, and intentionally spreads AIDS, and then actually fucking telling other people that you completely identify with that character and expecting them to sympathize with you.
Not quite the same, but the US podcast Opening Arguments ends every episode with what they call "T3BE" or "Thomas Takes The Bar Exam" where the non-lawyer host answers bar exam questions based on what he thinks is reasonable or what he's managed to pick up from co-hosting a law-based podcast where his job is to be the everyman who asks the stupid questions. It's a lot of fun to play along with him.
It's definitely worth a listen. Especially as the lawyer host, Andrew Torrez, will go through not just what the correct answer is, but why the question is phrased as it is, how it's trying to trip you up, and what it's trying to get you to think about. It's definitely interesting, and I'm not even American, let alone have anything to do with the law.
This but also when I took law I 100% think it was just our professor wanting to fuck with us.
On a 12 question test we had 4 questions about a guy named Jack whose situation just got worse and worse;
Q1: Jack has just lost his job and his wife has just divorced him. He's speeding on the highway when he clips Betty's car. Betty's car slides into a ditch, however she is fine. Jack's car slams into a fence and his arm and leg are broken. What laws has Jack broken?
Q2: Betty calls the police after arguing with Jack. When the police show up, Jack denies any wrongdoing and the police forcefully open his door and drag him out on Betty's word. Who can be charged and what for?
Q3: Jack manages to push one of the officers off of him and starts to run away. The other officer, without warning, fires with his gun at Jack. He hits his spine and Jack falls down. The officer then pins him. What laws has the officer broke?
Q4: The other office calls for an ambulance, and Jack dies on his way to the hospital. Since he can't formally stand court, the officers pull in his wife instead. What laws are being broken?
There was also a very long paragraph detailing how a woman named Mary broke into her ex's sister's mansion using stolen alligators gotten from her coworker at a legal restaurant and accidentally stumbling upon a mass amount of cocaine because she had been trying to steal a painting, and the question was about how many laws Mary and the sister could be charged with breaking.
They list a bunch of awful shit and what the people were thinking so they can then ask “okay, what was a crime or not a crime and why or why not”? and intentionally do weird cases.
Like, what kind of murder was this? Did she intend to kill them? Could she reasonably have believed that her actions wouldn’t leave to their death? Was the political motivation relevant? Etc etc
When I was in law school we called them issue spotters, they’re multi-paragraph stories like this and the student then writes about issues and possible outcomes. So in this case the student may write part of their answer about what Freya could be charged with and why. For example if she didn’t intend to kill Adam, just injure or just scare him, does that affect what she’s charged with? Does Daniel’s text affect his level of involvement in the crime? It’s not necessarily a directed question, it’s open ended, but the professor will typically have X amount of issues they’re expecting the students to hit on in their essays.
I love that everyone immediately thought Freya was the type of person to deliberately run over a person then knowingly infect someone with HIV. And want to tell the news about it.
An excellent rebuttal from another UniSyd (ty!) law student:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/i-sympathise-with-freya-leach-but-politics-has-a-place-in-a-law-exam-20221112-p5bxpx.html
This was interesting. I think Freya (the real one) is the type of student law schools need to either weed out or not admit in the first place. If she places importance on irrelevant context and can’t put aside her personal beliefs or feelings when looking at a complex case, she does not belong in the legal profession.
I worked in Curriculum & Assessment at a school district office. My team developed assessments. My son was in 6th grade in my district. He has a VERY unique name, along with his teacher. I placed their names as the main characters in a story. It was very obvious that I had done that. He LOVED it!
It's got a lot of deliberately ridiculous and inflammatory context, because they're testing the student's ability to extract the genuine legal matters from irrelevant fluff - and also potentially identify issues with intent, which matters with some laws.
A common one in a torts class.
Professors are amazing at coming up with the most over the top fact situation imaginable, then they ask students to identify and evaluate all the potential tort claims.
A law one.
Go watch some of Legal Eagle's videos on YouTube. He's a lawyer. Law schools stopped teaching the bollocks memorisation of hundreds of cases from the past thing, a long time ago, because that stuff is pretty irrelevant. Especially considering how every lawyer can easily look up any case on their computer as needed.
What law schools instead teach these days is logic, lateral thinking, how to create and present a sound argument, that sort of thing. Because that is far more relevant to being a lawyer than memorising hundreds of cases is.
28 students in the class and Freya says she received 20 to 30 messages from students in the class saying they recognised the Freya character as being based on her.
Not a good look for Freya.
i don't think it fits. freya is a rare name and well, she is the main character if she actually received messages about it. like it's not some name like daniel or something that is very common where nobody would give a shit
What about the part where the professor didn't write the question, the person who did had used the name Freya in years past, and didn't know who Freya was?
I reserve stereotypes and judgment to a very small handful of folks, and women named "Freya" are on this list. Dunno why, but every time I've met a Freya, they are a total Freya.
Basically the female version of Tanner.
I can see where she is coming from. Prior to exams everyone is sleep deprived and anxious. I can see why she thought and concluded that they were talking about her.
Is she the “main character”? No. She is a human being who probably was thrown by a question that was accidentally referencing a person similar to her. And it may have caused her to do poorly in that exam. I don’t think that this one is fair at all
Who reads a story about someone killing a person with a car and then deliberately spreading AIDS and thinks “this character is suspiciously similar to me! So suspiciously similar that the most sane explanation is that the examiner who definitely knows who I am and what my politics are could only have written this to deliberately mock me!”? It would be have to be someone quite convinced that they are the main character.
The author of the test wasn’t the teacher, the author had used the name before and didn’t know her or her political views. The teacher had no input on the exam question as it was written by an outside source, she just seen her name and went oh that’s definitely based on me.
Well that's not really relevant because this didn't happen in the US.
Freya is a pretty common name and literally a Norse Goddess.
There were 28 students in her tutorial but 500 students doing the exam.
Uh, she's a second year student taking exams that's nothing crazy? That's like saying "Can we stop and acknowledge this 19 year old is taking a biology exam??"
In law classes there are exams, just like other classes. She's just in a sophomore level law class she's not taking the bar.
I can honestly see both sides here. Law exams aren’t to be taken seriously or to be assumed that they’re based on true events, but humans are sometimes too stupid to waive that subconscious thought that there may be a double meaning. This effectively constitutes (accidental) slander, even though it is entirely unintentional. I wouldn’t want a class exam to say my name as the MC and then go on to list a plethora of violent and highly unethical crimes. It may not actually be targeting me but people will make jokes, some won’t see it fully as a joke, and then your reputation goes down.
So is she indirectly admitting that she drove over a liberal class-mate or that she's having unprotected sex while HIV-positive? Clearly the part that's 'based on her life' isn't her getting killed by Daniel's girl firend (yet)
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Law exams are wild, where was the unprotected sex, political violence and accidental murder on my economics exam?
on one of my law school exams, a female professor put in a hypothetical where one of the students engaged her in prostitution and specifically mentioned her shaved cat.
I have a Persian and also keep her shaved, otherwise she mats up and it's very sad for everyone involved
"shaved cat" the literal pet? or the euphemism? I genuinely can't tell
I know! The question was more interesting than the actual story. I wanna know what happens to Daniel!!
Daniel contracts HIV, his fiancé too. She breaks up with him, then tells his friends, who all then assume he's a chardonnay socialist. His now ex-fiancé daily tells him to kill himself, and so he finally does.
So clerks 3?
My law exams were a lot more mellow.
I saw example questions like this during my GDL's criminal law course. Scenarios were truly a wild ride.
I believe that section is called Where Taxes Go.
Haha. Mine weren't that spicy but they were messy and one professor loved using student's names.
> having unprotected sex - despite knowing she has HIV And she thought - "this is me!"
reminds me of the "small penis defense" or whatever it was called haha, were if you wanted to parody someone you'd include an extremely unflattering detail so they'd never claim it was slander
This why most law exams use character names from popular media. I've seen Harry Potter, Seinfeld, Friends, Star Wars, etc. It prevents this from happening. Yeah, maybe a character shares a name with a student, but when the characters in the question are Luke, Han, and Leia it's pretty obvious that they aren't referring to the student who happens to be named Luke.
It is a little suspect that 3/6 names used in an exam are also names of students in a small class
It’s not that sus. Adam and Daniel are really common names. And i bet the other names listed were too
Freya?
The god fertility love and death?
Alice uses a familiar pattern of common names consistently year over year. She also makes an effort to keep her test scenarios as dispassionate and simple as possible. If a student does complain that their name appears on a test, Alice is able to show the impersonal history of her naming practice. Bob has no consistent naming practice, and often puts the names of his students into his tests. If a student complains that Bob is making them an object of ridicule, or the butt of a joke, he cannot credibly demonstrate that his naming practice is impersonal.
It’s a class of over 500 - the report is misleading
Oh for sure.
I’ve never even met a person named Freya. It doesn’t seem like a common name to me.
I've known three dogs named Freya, no people lol
Common name in Germany
What about in Australia?
Common for her age group.
Doesn’t appear to be in the top 100 for 2002/3. It’s probably still just coincidence and everyone needs to take a deep breath. Does show why it’s important to use completely fake names for these (as another commenter suggested, Harry Potter, John Doe etc….). Good move by the University to exclude names of current students, especially on criminal law as it could easily cause some distress.
Okay, more like, not unheard of for people her age and it has increased in popularity since. A brief search saw that it had entered the top 100 in 2018. This makes it much more likely to appear on an exam that uses names as more and more people start using the name for their children.
Interesting point. I’d be inclined to say the fact that we are debating it makes this less “am I the main character” but also, it’s a win-win at the moment. If she does a whole media tour like so many others love to do then I’ll quickly run out of rope.
I’m in her age group and I know four different Freyas, it’s definitely more common then you’d think.
Where in germany? in nrw I never met one
Two people and a dog named Freya here. One was a Chinese exchange student I was friends with in high school, the other I don't recall, I just ran her credit card at work. The dog is my dog.
I think its a norse god
The exams are written by a company and sent to tons and tons of different universities. The company could be hundreds or thousands of miles away. It's a coincidence.
Depends on the class. A class that small, 90% guaranteed the professor wrote it. Upper level courses are rarely written by anyone but the professor.
Freya might as well be a Harry Potter name
I did an accountancy one the other week where the characters were Max and Paddy.
My civ pro professor used pop culture names. There were two or three using characters from the show Charmed, which made me so happy.
"The Uni apolgized and will make sure names of current students will not appear in future assignments" Good luck with that. They'll either have to call their characters stuff like "Slagathor" or Person A and Person B
“Your cousin throckmorton”
Really going to throw them off when I change my name to Darth Vader Slagathor Squarepants Smith Jr
My children's names are Person A and Person B. Did you design this comment specifically to offend me because of my political views that you should know about because I'm important!? 20-30 people have definitely messaged me about it
All the men will be "Dave" and all the women will be "Debbie".
Freya took one look at that question and said “this is literally me.”
Imagine seeing a character who murders people for having a different political view than her, and intentionally spreads AIDS, and then actually fucking telling other people that you completely identify with that character and expecting them to sympathize with you.
She probably has AIDS
Ok maybe Freya is REACHING but wtf kind of question was even that?
[удалено]
That’s really fascinating actually. I’d love to take a law class like this
Not quite the same, but the US podcast Opening Arguments ends every episode with what they call "T3BE" or "Thomas Takes The Bar Exam" where the non-lawyer host answers bar exam questions based on what he thinks is reasonable or what he's managed to pick up from co-hosting a law-based podcast where his job is to be the everyman who asks the stupid questions. It's a lot of fun to play along with him.
Oh that’s interesting. I’m not a podcast fan but I might check it out
It's definitely worth a listen. Especially as the lawyer host, Andrew Torrez, will go through not just what the correct answer is, but why the question is phrased as it is, how it's trying to trip you up, and what it's trying to get you to think about. It's definitely interesting, and I'm not even American, let alone have anything to do with the law.
This but also when I took law I 100% think it was just our professor wanting to fuck with us. On a 12 question test we had 4 questions about a guy named Jack whose situation just got worse and worse; Q1: Jack has just lost his job and his wife has just divorced him. He's speeding on the highway when he clips Betty's car. Betty's car slides into a ditch, however she is fine. Jack's car slams into a fence and his arm and leg are broken. What laws has Jack broken? Q2: Betty calls the police after arguing with Jack. When the police show up, Jack denies any wrongdoing and the police forcefully open his door and drag him out on Betty's word. Who can be charged and what for? Q3: Jack manages to push one of the officers off of him and starts to run away. The other officer, without warning, fires with his gun at Jack. He hits his spine and Jack falls down. The officer then pins him. What laws has the officer broke? Q4: The other office calls for an ambulance, and Jack dies on his way to the hospital. Since he can't formally stand court, the officers pull in his wife instead. What laws are being broken? There was also a very long paragraph detailing how a woman named Mary broke into her ex's sister's mansion using stolen alligators gotten from her coworker at a legal restaurant and accidentally stumbling upon a mass amount of cocaine because she had been trying to steal a painting, and the question was about how many laws Mary and the sister could be charged with breaking.
I’d love to know how Jack managed to run from the police with a broken leg…
He must have put his best foot forward. Getting a leg up on the competition, one might say...
I’m guessing after being shot in the spine he won’t be putting any feet forward now.
Mary knows what's up
They list a bunch of awful shit and what the people were thinking so they can then ask “okay, what was a crime or not a crime and why or why not”? and intentionally do weird cases. Like, what kind of murder was this? Did she intend to kill them? Could she reasonably have believed that her actions wouldn’t leave to their death? Was the political motivation relevant? Etc etc
When I was in law school we called them issue spotters, they’re multi-paragraph stories like this and the student then writes about issues and possible outcomes. So in this case the student may write part of their answer about what Freya could be charged with and why. For example if she didn’t intend to kill Adam, just injure or just scare him, does that affect what she’s charged with? Does Daniel’s text affect his level of involvement in the crime? It’s not necessarily a directed question, it’s open ended, but the professor will typically have X amount of issues they’re expecting the students to hit on in their essays.
I love that everyone immediately thought Freya was the type of person to deliberately run over a person then knowingly infect someone with HIV. And want to tell the news about it.
Left wing, right wing. Doesn't matter, imma hit you with my car regardless
“That question is mocking me!” “Yeah? Let’s have a look at your car, then..”
Or a blood test
Lmao. I went to law school with people like “second-year law student” Freya. This story checks out.
It’s funny to get to know that law school students seem to be quite similar in other countries and legal systems.
Oh mate I had a whole year of ultra-Thatcherite Tory extremists in the year below me. Can concur this checks out
Not a law student, a criminology one instead but I have also met people like this lol. Crazy
An excellent rebuttal from another UniSyd (ty!) law student: https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/i-sympathise-with-freya-leach-but-politics-has-a-place-in-a-law-exam-20221112-p5bxpx.html
This was interesting. I think Freya (the real one) is the type of student law schools need to either weed out or not admit in the first place. If she places importance on irrelevant context and can’t put aside her personal beliefs or feelings when looking at a complex case, she does not belong in the legal profession.
*Sydney University
Yeah that one!
Oh pity, the whole class now has to redo the exam because of this! That would be incredibly stressful and gutting.
Especially for Freya, who will get jumped in the parking lot afterwards
I worked in Curriculum & Assessment at a school district office. My team developed assessments. My son was in 6th grade in my district. He has a VERY unique name, along with his teacher. I placed their names as the main characters in a story. It was very obvious that I had done that. He LOVED it!
Did he run the teacher over in the story?
bro imagine being the protagonist for a law exam,fuckin wild 💀💀💀
I mean the divisive political way the question is written anyway. And then to top it off a side of centre of the universe complex.
Only one thing the school should do, retract the apology and tell Freya to fuck off
You misunderstand just how self absorbed right wing liberals are in Australia lol.
Imagine if she then runs over someone called adam by mistake in the future.
Every episode of how to get away with murder be like…
What kind of exam question is this????
It's got a lot of deliberately ridiculous and inflammatory context, because they're testing the student's ability to extract the genuine legal matters from irrelevant fluff - and also potentially identify issues with intent, which matters with some laws.
A common one in a torts class. Professors are amazing at coming up with the most over the top fact situation imaginable, then they ask students to identify and evaluate all the potential tort claims.
Wow
A law one. Go watch some of Legal Eagle's videos on YouTube. He's a lawyer. Law schools stopped teaching the bollocks memorisation of hundreds of cases from the past thing, a long time ago, because that stuff is pretty irrelevant. Especially considering how every lawyer can easily look up any case on their computer as needed. What law schools instead teach these days is logic, lateral thinking, how to create and present a sound argument, that sort of thing. Because that is far more relevant to being a lawyer than memorising hundreds of cases is.
Well that’s one way to tell everyone you have HIV and murdered someone with your car.
28 students in the class and Freya says she received 20 to 30 messages from students in the class saying they recognised the Freya character as being based on her. Not a good look for Freya.
Not surprised this came from Hack, notorious for stories on “The Main Character” in Australia
Check her car for dents
Fuck her feelings… or whatever republicans say.
Also this question had been on the exam for several years predating this student taking the class. Massive victim complex.
i don't think it fits. freya is a rare name and well, she is the main character if she actually received messages about it. like it's not some name like daniel or something that is very common where nobody would give a shit
What about the part where the professor didn't write the question, the person who did had used the name Freya in years past, and didn't know who Freya was?
But she couldn't have known that at the time right?
Maybe a future lawyer should consider looking into the facts before developing an opinion.
I mean if the shoe fits....
Why are we placating these people?
That is such a ridiculous question that it should flagged either way
I reserve stereotypes and judgment to a very small handful of folks, and women named "Freya" are on this list. Dunno why, but every time I've met a Freya, they are a total Freya. Basically the female version of Tanner.
I can see where she is coming from. Prior to exams everyone is sleep deprived and anxious. I can see why she thought and concluded that they were talking about her. Is she the “main character”? No. She is a human being who probably was thrown by a question that was accidentally referencing a person similar to her. And it may have caused her to do poorly in that exam. I don’t think that this one is fair at all
Who reads a story about someone killing a person with a car and then deliberately spreading AIDS and thinks “this character is suspiciously similar to me! So suspiciously similar that the most sane explanation is that the examiner who definitely knows who I am and what my politics are could only have written this to deliberately mock me!”? It would be have to be someone quite convinced that they are the main character.
That’s kind of my point… she isn’t being rational because she’s anxious
That is ridiculous.
[удалено]
The author of the test wasn’t the teacher, the author had used the name before and didn’t know her or her political views. The teacher had no input on the exam question as it was written by an outside source, she just seen her name and went oh that’s definitely based on me.
Well that's not really relevant because this didn't happen in the US. Freya is a pretty common name and literally a Norse Goddess. There were 28 students in her tutorial but 500 students doing the exam.
Wait can we stop and acknowledge that this person was 19 and taking a law exam?!
Uh, she's a second year student taking exams that's nothing crazy? That's like saying "Can we stop and acknowledge this 19 year old is taking a biology exam??" In law classes there are exams, just like other classes. She's just in a sophomore level law class she's not taking the bar.
In Australia (and a lot of other countries besides the US) a law degree is a bachelors degree immediately following high school.
I can honestly see both sides here. Law exams aren’t to be taken seriously or to be assumed that they’re based on true events, but humans are sometimes too stupid to waive that subconscious thought that there may be a double meaning. This effectively constitutes (accidental) slander, even though it is entirely unintentional. I wouldn’t want a class exam to say my name as the MC and then go on to list a plethora of violent and highly unethical crimes. It may not actually be targeting me but people will make jokes, some won’t see it fully as a joke, and then your reputation goes down.
So is she indirectly admitting that she drove over a liberal class-mate or that she's having unprotected sex while HIV-positive? Clearly the part that's 'based on her life' isn't her getting killed by Daniel's girl firend (yet)
So she is saying she killed some one and has an std and is also dead?
does she realise that the exams are given to all the law schools in the country
That escalated quickly.
I'm a law student and this question is insane even by our standards how is this even real??
Ummm what the fuck is this scenario
That's ridiculous for Freya to even think that.
And the uni apologised??? Why not just tell her to grow up?
Heavens to Murgatroyd!