Ollie spits no more

In law school, each semester of the first year CWRU worked it out so that you had a couple of smaller classes to balance out the lecture hall/stadium seating of the other classes.

One of my smaller classes was criminal law with Oliver C Schroeder (generally known as Ollie). This class was held in the moot court room because, as Ollie confessed to the class on perhaps the very first day, he had a tendency to spit and it was much better for all concerned if the well of the moot court room was between him and the class.

Ollie was quite the character, he was a pioneer in law collaborating with the Cuyahoga County coroners office and other to establish the law medicine centre and and do his best to bring of science and forensics into the curriculum.

I'll never really forget the story of the woman who died on because she went one bus stop too many or the day he waxed poetic about the Socratic method while grilling a fellow first year student asking isn't it wonderful? Isn't exciting? And her classic reply -- for you maybe.

Got an email today from the law school, I think I'd heard that Ollie had died but I must have forgotten and a certainly won't be able to attend the memorial service at the school in December but even though I didn't do so very well in crim and I didn't pursue that course, I admired him a lot for bringing real science into the class room.

I do find it more than a little disturbing to note that Donald Rumsfeld also took a class with Ollie and cited him as one of his most memorial teachers .