Meaningless Holidays

The best holidays are those that give you a day off for no particular reason. There's no logic or grand sentiment attached to them, merely some sort of desire for a day free of work. You can lay around and do what you wish without really knowing what you are supposed to be celebrating. Canberra's answer to this is the second Monday of March --- Canberra Day.

I shouldn't say that it is meaningless without reservation; for all I know there is ample reason for this holiday. I assume that it is Canberra's birthday and a few signs around the city seem to allude to that, but there's nothing definitive. It does give everyone an excuse to stay at home and catch up on whatever sleep they've been missing. I don't recall doing much of anything that day, but I did go up later that night and watched the fireworks from the Fenner roof. Explosives and pyrotechnics can add meaning to any meaningless celebration.

Later in the week, I was pleased to see that the CBC keeps track of stories from Australia. Recently, a kangaroo broke into a house in Canberra at night and frightened the occupants. It was chased away without any injuries. I think the most interesting thing is that the CBC actually bothered to carry it on their news website. In Canada, news doesn't often filter from Australia but occasionally it gets picked up, and I think this has gotten better in the last few years. Perhaps with the Victorian bushfires, there is more attention being paid to Australia but even before that, there were hints of increasing coverage. The last Australian federal election comes to mind as that was covered fairly well in the Canadian press where it wouldn't have beforehand. Australia has some fascinating stories to tell and I hope Canadians do get to hear them, not just the disasters.

Since the last week was uneventful, I'll close off with a brief discourse on the status of my Juris Doctor (JD) program. I approached the sub-dean recently, who also teaches my Corporations Law course, and asked if JDs are undergraduates who happen to take some postgraduate courses, postgraduates who happen to take mostly undergraduate courses or something else. His reply was that in his opinion, the JDs are a new species of student entirely; a sort of hybrid, which is a view I had come to myself some while back. He did say that our status in the broader academic sphere was unclear and the subject of debate but for present purposes of simplicity, we are counted among the postgraduate student ranks.

I did a little further research and found that the debate surrounding JDs is not isolated and there is no consensus among the various countries which offer JD programs. In the United States, the JD is considered a doctorate and graduates are entitled to use Dr. as a prefix, but this is only true of the United States. This poses an academic quandary since there is a separate degree called the Juris Doctor Scientiae (JDS) which much more closely approximates what most people consider to a doctorate program. In Canada, Australia and the UK, there is no consensus as to what academic rank JDs should be equated with (Bachelor, Master or Doctorate). It seems that the JD will be the subject of debate for many years to come.

In case you're wondering that this is purely an academic exercise, I will point out that there are some important practical implications regarding academic rank. At ANU, certain scholarships and government funding are available only for undergraduate or postgraduate studies. The housing accommodation guarantee is only offered to undergraduates. Dr. Bottomley (the sub-dean) said that the Law School was working with the university to see if JDs could gain access to both streams of funding, essentially allowing us to double-dip. There have been no decisions made so until then, JDs are in a state of limbo.

The status of the JD can also have implications in the event of an application for permanent residency. Australia employs a points test for those wishing to become permanent residents and the JDs classification could mean the difference between 5 and 25 points on the qualifications portion of the test, at least theoretically. 5 points, the minimum, are awarded for 2 years study in Australia and regardless of the eventual classification, I will get those points since the JD is a 3-year program. If the JD were classified as a doctorate, that would get me 25 points, the maximum. The most likely scenario talking to other staff at the ANU Law School, is that the JD would be classified as equivalent to a Master's degree, thus giving me 15 points, the intermediary amount; there are no 10 and 20 point scores. I'm hoping against hope that the "Doctor" in Juris Doctor will be enough to put me at 25 points should I wish to apply for residency, but I doubt it. I guess the only thing will be to roll the dice and apply at some point.