Jury Duty without Pauly Shore

I’m posting this here so that  hopefully a google search may turn it up when someone else needs this.  I wish I had it 2 months ago.

Search terms:

Grand Jury Duty

Queens

New York City

CUNY

I was called for jury duty at the beginning of this summer.  Grand jury duty.  Four weeks, five days a week, 7-1/2 hours a day.  I was, at the time, teaching a summer class online.   I contacted York’s HR department to seek guidance.  I was originally told to talk to my chair because finding a replacement is a departmental matter.  I then explained that I’d need to be replaced for four weeks.  They said that they would check on it.  Their solution was for me to seek a postponement until after my summer class is over.  I found out, fortunately in time, that a postponement would not work.

The term and frequencies of grand juries vary from county to county and also within each county also.  So what I’m describing will not be exactly the same if you live in Brooklyn.  But usually there is a set term.  Mine was five days a week for four weeks.  Other Queens county grand juries run two days a week for several months.    I was called for the 7th grand jury of the year which ran from June 20th to July 15th.  The next jury began July 18 and ran until 8/12.  The next grand jury after that began 8/15 and will run until 9/9.

Thus, my problem.  If I would have postponed my jury duty as  HR suggested, until after July 26 (the end of my summer class), I would have to wait until the 9th jury, which runs from 8/15 until 9/9 … which would have meant that I would miss the first two weeks of fall semester.  I was also concerned about the 7/18 to 8/12 jury – I would have had jury duty the last two weeks of the course (including when I would be grading final projects and submitting grades) and would need to cancel my family’s summer vacation plans.

Given this and the promise of wi-fi in the jury room, I decided to get it over with asap and started serving June 20.  Unfortunately, there was no wi-fi in the jury room which made it difficult to keep up with my online course.  However, I was able to use wi-fi at Starbuck’s during lunch and kept up with the course.

If you are teaching at CUNY, and teaching in the summer, there is no time to serve on a jury.  As I’ve worked out above, you can’t serve in the summer.  And I bet that the first jury term of the year begins the first Monday in January and runs into the first week of February (and the first week or two of spring semester).  Thus, you cannot squeeze it in during January.

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