Gould dean apologizes for restricting tailgate


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Gould School of Law Dean Andrew Guzman met with Alex Hurd, president of the Student Bar Association, earlier this week to apologize for the administration’s handling of the recent decision to limit the Gould Annual Alumni Tailgate to only alumni.

“He took it on himself to remedy whatever miscommunication happened,” Colton Cray, a second-year law student, said. “They’re working with the Student Bar Association … in order to create a new replacement event … so the student body knows that the administration does feel bad about the miscommunication, and they want to fix it.”

Kyle Jones, dean of students at the Gould School, sent out an email Friday informing students that the Alumni Tailgate, which was scheduled for last Saturday and had traditionally been open to students, would only be available to alumni this year.

“It was not our intention to give such short notice, and we understand that it was both disrespectful and very inconvenient to the students,” said Scott Altman, vice dean of the Gould School.

Guzman plans to meet with the entire Gould student body next Tuesday in order to apologize for having given them late notice about the change. He has also agreed to have the law school fund the next tailgate for students.

“We had no specific desire to be excluding students. We decided to make a change to a new location because not enough alumni had been coming to the event in prior years,” Altman said. “Once we changed locations, we had a much more limited space available, and so we decided to make it alumni-only.”

The late notice was due to an administrative error, Altman said. The law school has several understaffed offices, and two offices each thought the other would be meeting with student leaders to give advance notice about the policy change. The mistake was not discovered until much later, delaying the announcement about the tailgate.

“At the time it ruffled a lot of feathers … but it made sense … Resources are limited this year,” Cray said. “At the end of the day, it was fine. Students got their own tailgate … They’ve really gone above and beyond remedying the situation.”