“You can tell who the law students are because they’re all kind of old and really stressed out.”  These were the words of a freshman to her friend, overheard by an old and stressed law student, while walking around Boston College’s Newton campus.

BC Law is located within the quiet Boston suburb of Newton.  BC’s main campus is located a mile and a half away, in the Newton neighborhood of Chestnut Hill, which directly abuts Boston.  The law school shares its home with dorms for about half of the Boston College undergraduate freshmen.  For us law students, it can be invigorating and refreshing to be surrounded by such passionate youth.  They, however, are unhappy about the arrangement.  While all of BC Law’s classes are held on the Newton Campus, all of the undergrad classes, and administrative offices, and social engagements, and sporting events, and access to public transportation are located on main campus.  The Newton freshmen are a shuttle bus away from all of these offerings.  The other half of BC’s freshmen, in a luck of the draw, reside on main campus, in an area called “Upper.”  When I was a freshman at BC, I had the great fortune of living on Upper.  One of my friends, relegated to Newton, spent many nights sleeping in Upper’s student lounges, with stashes of toiletries and spare clothes scattered throughout our more fortunate friends’ rooms.

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