Sometimes, living in a smaller community is just weird. Today I got a call from the Clerk of the Courts for my county. I wrote a request last week to postpone my jury service from late August/early September to January of next year because I'm teaching two upper level classes this semester that can't really be covered by anyone else here at NWU. So the Clerk of the Courts called to tell me that the legislature has made it a law that you can't postpone (or whatever) jury duty for work related reasons, and so I'll have to serve during that time (unless I go to court to get a court order from a judge for an emergency deferral thingy--not gonna happen). But he wanted to reasure me that I wouldn't necessarily be put on a trial.
Okay, so I'll do my civically responsible duty.
But how weird is it that the Clerk of the Courts called me to explain? It's sort of nice, but weird, too.
I have a request out there for the Northwoods folks: could you put off your crimes and court business stuff until after September, please? And if your trial is slated for late August/early September, could you do me a favor and settle out of court?
(I wonder if I can call a colleague out of retirement for a guest class on Chaucer maybe? But he's such a great teacher that my students would never want me back!)
That's really kind of cool - I live in a larger metro area where it's impossible to get in touch with any kind of human being in the justice system.
ReplyDeleteEven if you do get called, though, the vast majority of trials don't last more than a day or two, so it shouldn't be too much of a disruption - maybe schedule a couple of flexible days in your syllabus to make it easy to cancel one if you have to. Good luck!
You might talk to your dean -- when I got called for jury duty, my dean just called the clerk of court and explained I had classes to teach and no one else could teach them and that was that.
ReplyDeletePilgrim/Heretic, Really? Every trial I've been on has dragged on over at least four days.
ReplyDeleteDelagar, Hmm, I got the impression this was a legislative act about not accepting work excuses.