Wednesday, October 29, 2008
SB 015-09 The Mockers
SB 015-09*
Comments:
I encourage SUUSA SENATE to approve this bill without question. Bills that come before the senate that are academic in nature are very important to encourage and to support. It troubles me when a bill that is "fluff", meaning that is used for paper plates and birthday cake, passes with less resistance than does a bill that is academic in nature. Encourage and support excellence first before the fluff. Just a thought.
# posted by 
: 8:11 AM
This bill and the funds given through it, will be used properly and therefore I encourage it. PS I thought the bill would produce more funds for our team.
E Nay
# posted by : 8:13 AM
Here are answers to a few questions provided by Carl Franklin, the Mock Trial Team’s advisor.
How many students are going?
A team is composed of 10 individuals. The ASU Invitational is restricted to 20 teams, so we are only planning to take 1 team.
How long will they be staying?
Leave Cedar City on November, 20, competition begins the morning of November 21 and lasts through early evening of November 23. The tournament starts too early in the morning to make it a reasonable drive (we would have to leave at midnight and drive all nite, and it's not usually a good idea to do that before an academic competition) so we've asked for rooms for the 20th, 21st, and 22nd. We plan to drive back after the competition is over on the 23rd.
What other competitions are they planning on participating in?
We have invitations to the UCLA Invitational, Yale Invitational, and the Top of the Rockies Invitational tournaments. We would love all 3 but more realistically can only see UCLA and Top of the Rockies since they are close. Cost for the UCLA trip would be similar to that for ASU. The Top of Rockies is hosted by Weber State, so the cost should be a bit lower.
It is important to also note that last year we qualified for the Regional Competition, but there was a lack of funding so we did not go. Only teams who have winning records or success in at least 2 tournaments are eligible, so this was a great achievement for our first year in national competition. We have a majority of the team from last year returning, so I anticipate this year's team has an equal chance to qualify for regional. Better yet, they have an excellent chance to qualify for the national tournament as well, but we won't have that information until at least the 2nd tournament.
Is the program growing?
The Mock Trial team is a part of the SUU Law club, which has seen steady growth. The Law Club has members from across campus and offers an opportunity for students to compete as well as provide community service. The team is growing as well, though the number of participants for any given competition is limited. We have lots of folks who would like to compete, and if we had the funding we could take 2 or 3 teams to each competition.
I would be interested to see how many of those who participated on last years trial team were accepted into law school.
I don't believe that we had any seniors on the team last year (all freshman, sophomores and juniors). The two years before the team competed at lesser tournaments. In our first year we placed 2nd and had the top individual at the National Diversity competition hosted by John Marshall Law School in Chicago. The next year we did equally well. From those two years at least 5 members applied to law school and all were accepted. The highest ranked school was New York University. The student admitted there also received offers from Georgetown and Yale. Other team members have gone to Creighton, Gonzaga, UNLV, U of U, and BYU.
It is important to note also that we recently had the Academic and Admission Deans from Creighton University and George Washington University law school on campus to recruit our students. The efforts of the law club and the trial team have gained some national attention. Creighton, Gonzaga, Drake, U of U, George Washington and a couple other schools have already waived the application fees for SUU graduates. These schools have also been very positive with their recruitment of our students with a majority receiving financial aid from the institution because of their work at SUU.
# posted by 
Stewart : 4:12 PM