For the UW Mediation Clinic, our EEOC mediation is sort of like the capstone. It's an assignment we get at the begining of the quarter and - unlike the little tooth-cutter cases we handle more regularly - we're responsible for it. We're responsible for contacting the parties, for scheduling, for doing the appropriate mailings, for getting the right paperwork, for reserving the room, setting out the water and pens and kleenex and paper, and otherwise molding it into the mediation that it will eventually become.
It's a process that spans weeks (and for unlucky students who've got lawyers involved in the mix, even months) just getting people into the room together. There was *a lot* of negotiation going into that one for this case. I genuinely thought this case may never make it to mediation, actually. I was rather ecstatically surprised when both parties turned out be so cooperative, creative and willing to work together in person! Ordinarily, a student would probably share this mediation with her teacher, which I would have enjoyed. Due to scheduling issues, though, Dee Knapp was my first professional co-mediator. This was something that seemed awfully daunting since we only met fifteen minutes before the mediation, but a pairing that turned out to be really exciting and fun as we had complementary styles and made a great team. It took most of the day and involved lots of faxes and phone calls and near-miss impasses, but we got an agreement that worked for everyone. Ultimately this signed agreement that I'm walking away with (but not too far, hopefully, since I hear the EEOC kind of wants it at some point in order to like drop some charges or... something like that) is my baby: the product of interminable hours of labor pangs and ice chips and (only imagined) screaming. Maybe if I black out all the confidential information, I can frame a copy and/or put it on my fridge with a gold star!
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