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March 4, 2010, 10:51 PM ET

Mischievous Law Prof + Texting Students = Media Frenzy

By David Glenn

Add this to the reasons you might not want to allow texting in your classroom:

Above the Law, a legal blog, reports that a Georgetown University law professor unwittingly caused a national media frenzy on Thursday when he used a Paper Chase-style pedagogical gambit.

According to Above the Law's report, Peter W. Tague began his criminal-law course Thursday morning by telling the class that the U.S. Supreme Court's chief justice, John G. Roberts, would soon announce his retirement for health reasons. At least one student in the class immediately began sending notes to the outside world.

Within 20 minutes, Radar Online, a gossip site that is a corporate sibling of the National Enquirer, published an "exclusive" about the alleged news. From there the rumor moved on to The Drudge Report and dozens of other blogs.

But Mr. Tague had only been trying to prove a point. As one student wrote to Above the Law, "halfway through our lecture on the credibility and reliability of informants he revealed that the Roberts rumor was made up to show how someone you ordinarily think is credible and reliable (i.e., a law professor) can disseminate inaccurate information."

In that same spirit, The Chronicle should note that we haven't contacted Mr. Tague to confirm the tale. But we've never known Above the Law to be anything other than credible and reliable. Right?

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Comments

1. koonoo - March 07, 2010 at 10:11 pm

+ believability
"soon announce his retirement for health reasons.",
it seems believable.

Don
Knowledge NoteBook

2. arrive2__net - March 14, 2010 at 06:36 pm

Nominally, since you are paying tuition you are going to think that the prof is going to tell you some useful truth in class, now wouldn't you? On the other hand it is a good idea to ask about or consider how that prof would know that information. I think it was a brilliant lesson for the students, I didn't figure that out till I was older. It is a little scary how something so totally made can up spread so fast though ... through the www.
Bernard Schuster
Arrive2.net

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