I’ve noticed a trend over the past three or four semesters:  fewer current students visit during office hours.  In prior years on the day before exams my office would be filled with students for the entire scheduled time.  I often stayed late to accommodate the demand.  Before this semester’s first exam only a handful of students visited my office.  I’ve tried to explain it without success.  (“My teaching is so good that no students are confused” was not on the list of possible explanations.

I mentioned this to a student today.  He’s representative of most of my student visitors.  He is not currently in one of my classes.  He visits regularly to talk about whatever is on his mind.  He’s smart, disagrees as much as he agrees with me, and I’m always happy to talk to him.  He recognized the trend and had an instant explanation:  ”we all use Blackberries.  (or iPhones).”  I didn’t understand.  He spelled it out:  ”we’re all used to getting information instantly, whenever we want it.  There’s no reason to get it face-to-face.  We don’t even talk to our friends face-to-face.”   His classmates don’t comprehend why he visits me and other professors in their office.   He noted that the students who entered university in the past few years grew up with texting and instant always-on web access.  He has noted the same trend that prompted my question.

A few hours later I was talking to another student who is currently in one of my courses.  I mentioned this trend to her, along with the proffered explanation.  She was nodding her head in agreement before I finished the sentence.  She said that everyone is busy with team meetings, clubs, extracurricular events, and other activities, and that given the choice between meeting a professor face to face and asking a question via email, they choose email.   As a group her peers do not see compelling reasons to visit office hours.

If you are of similar mind, consider these points:

• It’s easy to feel lost in a school as big as BU.  Office hours provide a personal connection to faculty that make the school smaller.
• Some questions are readily answered via email.  (Some of those questions are readily answered by reading the damned syllabus before asking, but that’s another post.)  Many are not.  They require give-and-take, nuanced explanation, face-to-face communication–you know, a conversation.
• If you ask most of my prior students how to do well on Intro to Law exams they’ll tell you to hang out in my office asking and answering questions the day before the exam.  Such small-group teacher-student discussions have been regular events during my office hours–until the past year.
• Read Explanation Wanted.  Some day all of you will want a professor’s recommendation for graduate school, employment, the parole board . . . If you have never talked to a professor outside of class, if the professor’s only recollection of you comes through your transcript, your recommendation will be two-dimensional.

I could continue but in three minutes I must be available downstairs to answer students’ questions about the law concentration at SMG.  The event will not be podcast, YouTubed, or texted.  Live face-to-face interactions only.

Yesterday the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reversed Matt Zubiel’s conviction of attempting to disseminate matter harmful to a minor, ruling that M.G.L. c. 272, § 31′s definition of matter “does not encompass electronically transmitted text, or ‘online conversations.’”  Zubiel, age 25, engaged in instant messaging with “Melissa QT1995,” who he believed to be a 13-year old girl but was actually the online persona of police officer Melissa Marino.  Zubiel and Melissa engaged in four separate online conversations in which Zubiel asked Melissa about her sexual experience, “told her that we would to visit and that he ‘would teach [her] everything,’” and arranged to meet Melissa at her apartment.  During one of these chats Zubiel asked if Melissa was a police officer; he repeated this question during a telephone call shortly before their scheduled meeting.  [More than once a student has asked whether undercover police can lie in response to this question.   I'm not sure what they envision--"am I a police officer?  Wow, good guess!   Well, you sure ended my investigation.  Next time remind me to chase a criminal who's less astute!")  Police arrested Zubiel as he walked toward Melissa's apartment building.  He admitted "'it was a possibility that he would have sex with this girl if--if, indeed, she was a real girl . . ."

Zubiel was charged with violating M.G.L. c. 272, §28:  "Whoever disseminates to a minor any matter harmful to minors, as defined in section thirty-one, knowing it to be harmful to minors, or has in his possession any such matter with the intent to disseminate the same to minors, shall be punished . . . " M.G.L. c. 272 §31 defines matter as "any handwritten or printed material, visual representation, live performance or sound recording including but not limited to, books, magazines, motion picture films, pamphlets, phonographic records, pictures, photographs, figures, statues, plays, dances."  The Commonwealth made two arguments:  that computer text is a visual representation, or that computer text is handwritten or printed material.

Citing the principle that "[p]enal statutes must ‘define the criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited”  the SJC rejected both arguments:

General Laws c. 272, § 31, does not define “visual representation.”  However, it does define “[v]isual material,” listing numerous specific media that are considered “visual material” under the statute. ["any motion picture film, picture, photograph, videotape, book,magazine, pamphlet that contains pictures, photographs or similar visual representations or reproductions, or depiction by computer. Undeveloped photographs, pictures, motion picture films, videotapes and similar visual representations or reproductions may be visual materials notwithstanding that processing, development or similar acts that may be required to make the contents thereof apparent."]  When elements are listed in a series, the rules of statutory construction require the general phrase to be construed as restricted to elements similar to the specific elements listed . . . Here, the specific elements listed as “[v]isual material” are limited to the class of pictures–moving or still, whether on paper, film, or computer. The statute indicates nowhere an intent by the Legislature to include words, such as those used in online conversations, in this definition.

[ . . . ]

The online conversations in this case were not handwritten. While there is no statutory definition of “handwritten” materials, in the absence of such definition, “we give [the words] their usual and accepted meanings, as long as these meanings are consistent with the statutory purpose . . . The relevant definition of the word “write” is “to form or trace (a character or series of characters) on paper or other suitable material with a pen or pencil” (emphasis added).

The remaining issue is whether the instant messages in this case are “printed material” under § 31. . .  Webster’s Third New Int’l Dictionary [] defines the verb “print” as “to make a copy of by impressing paper against an inked printing surface or by an analogous method” (emphasis added). Here, Zubiel electronically transmitted text, which did not involve the impression of paper against an inked printing surface, and did not cause any mechanically produced text to be printed on paper.

The SJC closed by noting that “while proscribing the activity in this case would be consistent with a legislative intent to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation, the definitions in §31 do not do so. If the Legislature wishes to include instant messaging or other electronically transmitted text in the definition of “[m]atter” under §31, it is for the Legislature, not the court, to do so.”