April 17

, 2008Dear Dean Gomez-Velez,Thank you for meeting with us on April 10

. We write to file a formal complaint basedon the performance of our First Year Lawyering Seminar instructor, Associate Professor AngelaBurton. This complaint can be divided into the following topic areas: grading, communication,consistency, professionalism, and Prof. Burton’s history of unsatisfactory performance as aCUNY Law instructor. We have listed below our most important grievances, categorized bytopic area. Given her hostility expressed towards certain students in class, we do not feelcomfortable personally discussing these issues with Prof. Burton. We file this complaint pursuant to the 2007-2008 edition of the CUNY Law Student Handbook and we believe that theissues addressed in this complaint are not protected by academic freedom. This complaintreflects Prof. Burton’s neglect of duty and incompetent service, both of which are listed in theHandbook as sufficient grounds for student complaints.Unfortunately, our experience with Prof. Burton has severely inhibited our abilities toengage with CUNY Law’s ultra-important Lawyering curriculum. Given the history of studenttroubles with Prof. Burton, this has become an institutional problem which must be promptly andadequately addressed by the Administration. Current and future students at CUNY Law deserveno less. Again, thank you for meeting with us and we look forward to updates of theAdministration’s follow-up on this issue.Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter,Concerned Students of First Year Lawyering Seminar HCc: Concerned Students of Lawyering Seminar B, who had Prof. Burton as an instructor lastsemester and met with Dean Gomez-Velez regarding similar problems with Prof. BurtonCc: Concerned Students of Prof. Burton’s Spring 2007 LFR class, who circulated a petition andmet with Dean Anderson and former Academic Dean Edwards regarding Prof. Burton’sinadequate performanceCc: Dean AndersonBelow are the specific areas of concern:I.GRADINGa.Prof. Burton’s grading has been arbitrary and not reflective of student performance. This statement is based on her grading of our draft pretrial briefs onextraordinary circumstances, submitted on March 3

, 2008 (the only grade we’vereceived thus far). Her evaluation of these briefs was vague, sometimes1

contradictory, and inconsistent with her stated expectations. Even students whowere given relatively high grades were puzzled by her apparent oversight of significant flaws in their analyses and structures. For example, Prof. Burton set astrict 12-page limit for the briefs, despite student protest and other Lawyeringinstructors’ willingness to extend the page limit on the assignment. Somestudents who received high grades on the brief significantly exceeded the pagelimit while many of the students that struggled to meet the page limit receivedlower grades, apparently because of missing content and analysis. Obviously, it isunfair that those students were penalized for lack of content in part because theystayed within the page limit, while the students who did not meet the page limitwere able to include more analysis and were thus given higher grades. Thisleaves students uncertain as to whether Prof. Burton will stick to her statedexpectations in future evaluations. b.Prof. Burton engages in favoritism (or

dis-

favoritism) in class and many studentsfear that this may also be reflected in her grading. For example, students havenoticed a relationship between grades on our draft briefs and the amount of clarifying questions asked in class. That is, the students who ask Prof. Burton toclarify statements or assignments in class (often triggering her hostility) seemedto receive lower grades than the students that rarely speak in class or those thatask no clarification questions. Many in the latter group have expressed a lack of desire to engage in class for fear of “saying the wrong thing” or falling intodisfavor with Prof. Burton, which could translate to her grading. This is a stark contrast to our seminar last semester when there was much more studentengagement by a larger portion of students. This chilling effect in the classroomhas severely limited our abilities to openly engage with the Lawyeringcurriculum.c.Prof. Burton’s seminar section in Fall 2007 (Seminar B) received grades that werenoticeably lower than any other seminar section that semester--only one studentreceived an A- and the rest of the grades were lower. Students from that sectionhave complained about unfair grading from Prof. Burton and report that sheannounced at the beginning of the semester that she would not give grades abovea B+ because first year law students do not produce "A" work.d.With 75% of our grades still to be determined, we want to ensure that they reflectour true performances and are not arbitrarily assigned.II.COMMUNICATIONa.Prof. Burton refused to give us her written feedback on our ungraded draft rulestatements and rule explanations for the first brief, with no explanation as to why.Prof. Burton continues to request that we submit additional work to her, usually by email after class has ended instead of during class. However, she has not2

returned any of this written work with comments or feedback for us to improveour writing and analysis. This work includes the above-mentioned draft rulestatements and rule explanations, four case briefs, a fact summary for the draft brief, a log of cases relevant to the equitable estoppel portion of our brief, asample argument for the equitable estoppel portion of our revised brief, an outlineof our revised brief, and our revised briefs submitted on April 16

. We questionwhy she continually requests that we submit these items to her but refuses to giveus her written feedback on them. This is inconsistent with the Lawyeringcurriculum’s focus on guided instruction and inconsistent with how other Lawyering professors are engaging their classes. b.Many students find her methods of communication, particularly when requestingclarity on an issue, to be patronizing and inappropriate for students at our level.c.On more than one occasion, Prof. Burton has rolled her eyes as students ask questions; other times she appears distracted and inattentive, looking at the clock when students ask her questions.d.On April 4

, Prof. Burton announced via TWEN that we must turn in “Case Grids(worth 5% of final course grade - see syllabus)”, without ever explaining in classthis assignment or giving much explanation on the TWEN site. It seems that shewishes us to submit case grids based on cases we studied over 1 ½ months ago, but she did not indicate at the time we were studying the cases that they wouldneed to be gridded. In fact, many of us understood that 5% portion of our gradeto have already been completed when we presented cases to the class. The coursesyllabus says nothing about turning in case grids with our final revised drafts onMay 1

.III.CONSISTENCYa.Prof. Burton has departed from the Lawyering course curriculum on more thanone occasion, without explanation. For example, the course syllabus stated thatduring class on April 7

and 10

, we would work on preparing for our oralarguments (worth 20% of our final grade). Despite student concerns raised inclass, Prof. Burton refused to talk about the oral arguments that week and statedthat we “might” get to them on April 14

. In fact, we spent a total of 15 minutesdiscussing oral arguments on April 14

and Prof. Burton directed us to a 20 pagereading assignment in our text to learn everything else about the subject. Shenoted an “evaluation” sheet for the oral argument on the TWEN site but did notgo over it with us. The evaluation sheet seemed confusing to many students butthere was no time left in class to go over it. Meanwhile, the other Lawyeringseminars had been discussing and mooting oral arguments in class, which leaves3