To: Students in Property (AB)
From: Stephen J. Schnably

I apologize for the mix-up with today's class. I had in fact requested the classroom until 12:30 for today, next Friday, and the following Friday, and had received confirmation of the reservation from the Registrar's Office. When the Registrar's Office entered my extended class time into the system the Office uses to keep track of room usage, the system didn't automatically alert the Office that there was a conflict between my use of the classroom until 12:30 today and the MPRE, and the Office didn't notice the conflict on its own. This was an uncharacteristic mistake on the part of the Registrar's Office, which generally handles many complicated tasks related to the class and room schedules very well. I think it happened in part because of all the changes to class schedules that have been taking place to make up for time lost to Wilma. The Office will be looking into ways to make sure that this kind of problem doesn't happen in the future. At the time I became aware of the conflict, I decided that I shouldn't stick to my ground and continue to claim the room. The MPRE is one of two exams students have to pass to enter the bar, and preventing its administration would have had a very big impact on graduating students.

Since class ended at about noon, this leaves us about 25 minutes short of making up the three classes (or 240 minutes) we missed last week.

I've decided that the best way to handle it is to extend one of two of the Friday classes. Either we can extend the class on Friday November 11 and Friday November 18 to 12:35 p.m. (instead of 12:25), or we could have an extra long class on one of those Fridays (until 12:45 p.m. -- e.g., 10:15-11:25, 11:35-12:45). I will let you know early next week which we will do; it depends on what the best way to cover the material is.

In terms of the material we were going to cover, I will hold you responsible for the material in III.E.1. I will spend a very brief time on Wednesday going over the rest of that material before we move on to landlord/tenant law. As for what's in III.E.2, I think it's to your advantage to have read it (which you should have done before today's class), but I won't hold you responsible for estates by the entireties on the final exam. The material in III.E.3 remains as it's marked on the assignment sheet -- I want you to be familiar with the general concept of community property versus the common law separate property system, but I won't test you on it. The key thing in this area is to know the basic rules and issues pertaining to joint tenancies and tenancies in common.

Please see the course web page for next week's assignments.