<p>I think to be called in MA the student would have had to change their voter registration (which many students will do especially in a presidential election year). Most states use voter registration rolls to call jury members. Maybe the other option is changing your drivers license. Other than that I have no idea how a state would call OOS college students.</p>
<p>My daughter was summoned for the county court, and with a phone call was allowed to pick a specific week (I think 6 months later, or something like that) to be on call.</p>
<p>My DD was called over the summer when she was working abroad, I sent in the form requesting a delay. She just got a form for December…one week before she is home and the week before Christmas. Her sister got called for the same time period. I am not sure what she is going to do, as she does not know when she will be “home” this summer, if at all as she is in Med School and they may have summer assignments in different places.</p>
<p>As other people have said, it’s completely weird that Massachusetts is calling college kids who apparently haven’t changed their voting registrations or driver’s licenses. It looks like it’s the only state to do that, too. Of course, MA probably has a higher proportion of college students than anywhere else in its population (assuming you count all of the students attending college there). But generally, you would think prosecutors and judges would not be anxious to see lots of non-resident students on their juries. So it’s hard to understand how MA could have stumbled into this practice. Maybe there’s some state-court ruling that forces them to treat college students as residents.</p>
<p>Being a full time student is no longer a valid excuse. Schools are required to allow students to miss classes and makeup school work if they have to serve. That being said, it could be postponed to a school break. </p>
<p>As far as being called in your school state vs. your home state, that’s another story. If there is any way she could call or go down to the court in person and explain the situation, I think she could be excused. </p>
<p>My D was also called, but in her home state (she also goes to school in MA but has never been called there). She postponed it until she was home from school.</p>
<p>From [The</a> Jury System - Overview of Jury Service](<a href=“http://www.mass.gov/courts/sjc/jury-system-b.html]The”>http://www.mass.gov/courts/sjc/jury-system-b.html)</p>
<p>" … out-of-state students who study in Massachusetts and live here for six months of the year or more are eligible to serve in Massachusetts. This often comes as a surprise to out-of-state students, who may come from a jurisdiction where only permanent residents of that state are eligible to serve."</p>
<p>Also from an older thread in this forum: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/140844-jury-duty-state-where-you-attend-college-2.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/140844-jury-duty-state-where-you-attend-college-2.html</a></p>
<p>I just asked my daughter, and she is still registered in Georgia, but confirmed that MA has special rules about college kids being called for jury duty. Mine was called in the same county as the OP, but as I stated, she sat for 2 hours in a random room, then they came in and said go home. OP, if your D goes, tell her that courthouse is freezing. D went in August and said she was literally shivering.</p>
<p>Seems like it would be better to do absentee ballots then. If you get called in your home state, then you could say that you’re in the other state in school.</p>
<p>I guess that those residing in school dorms in MA are there for at least six months and fair game for the MA courts. Perhaps those living in off-campus apartments aren’t caught in this. MA has pretty stringent health-reporting requirements for colleges and perhaps the health reporting lists are also used to make up the jury lists.</p>
<p>^
BC, daughter did absentee ballot, was stilll called to jury duty.</p>
<p>I guess MA is really hard-core when it comes to Jury Duty then.</p>
<p>DS also had to serve while an undergrad in MA, though he was able to postpone till summer. On the plus side, it is one day or one trial. On the minus, he had to get up at O-dark-thirty and take the light rail out to a distant courthouse.
[Jury</a> Duty Makes Some Students ?Angry Men? | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2006/10/17/jury-duty-makes-some-students-angry/]Jury”>Jury Duty Makes Some Students ‘Angry Men’ | News | The Harvard Crimson)</p>
<p>Someone has to know the history and background of this idiosyncratic state policy. I can’t imagine the political process coming up with this rule.</p>
<p>One-day, one-trial is fine, as long as you don’t draw a significant trial. The last time I had jury duty, I got picked for a jury, and I was occupied for four days before the case got dismissed on grounds that should have been obvious a year before the jury was empaneled. In fairness, the presiding judge got the case assigned to him 12 hours before the jury panel showed up. It took him a few days to get through all the motions and to understand the case.</p>
<p>I was completely inappropriate as a juror, but there were two or three others on the same jury who were even more inappropriate than I was. (It was a medical malpractice case. One of the jurors was a secretary at the biggest med-mal firm in town, one was an ICU administrator at a large academic hospital, and one was a recent law school graduate clerking for the appellate court that would hear any appeal from the trial. If those people couldn’t get excused for cause, I shudder to think who WAS getting tossed out.) And that was AFTER all the challenges. That tells you something about how hard it is to put together a decent jury pool.</p>
<p>Interesting: in your article, it says that juror lists are culled from Census lists. Our kids’ apartment in MA doesn’t get mail. You have to put your name on the mailbox for the postal service to deliver mail. I never put our names on the mailbox so anyone sending mail to us would see it returned to them. I imagine that we’d be getting all sorts of things from the city and state and probably get census stuff too if we were considered a valid address.</p>
<p>Oldest DS got called for jury duty in Illinois when he was attending school there. He called and told them he was not a permanent resident of the state and they excused him.</p>
<p>Youngest DS was recently called for jury duty here at home. He is at school several hundred miles away. I called and explained to them that he was not even in the local area. They told me that as his mom, I could write an excuse for him. I just had to let them know when he was expected to graduate and they would wait till then to call him again. </p>
<p>I can’t believe that I got to write a “please excuse my son” from jury duty note. I guess we never really do stop being mom and writing notes for our kids. Maybe I should ask my mom to write me an excuse note the next time I get called.</p>
<p>It’s one thing to miss work for jury duty when you are protected by law from being penalized by your employer (and you still must be paid), but I can’t understand why it’s okay to insist that a college student miss classes when there are many tuition $$$ being paid for that education… if the option to reschedule to a convenient time is not available, that’s really problematic.</p>
<p>I live in MA and I’m in Worcester County. I just served on a jury in October. I get called on a regular basis. Once you show up at the courthouse (even if you don’t serve), you won’t be called again for 3-4 years (can’t remember the exact timeframe). On the information you get from the courts, it says that 85% of trials are finished in 1 day and 95% are finished in 3 days. The materials say to set aside 3 days!! I was selected as an alternate juror on a civil case. I ended up serving on the jury because the plaintiff’s attorney used a peremptory challenge to get rid of the only student who was initially selected. He was wearing a WPI tee-shirt, so I’m assuming he was a college student. He looked really happy as he walked out of the courtroom and I went up to take his seat.</p>
<p>My daughter was called for jury duty, but our county lets you reschedule for any time up to a year from the date called. She put in for after school gets out for the summer and she returns home from OOS. She’s looking forward to it. I believe they use voter reg and DMV (licenses and id cards) for the jury pools.</p>
<p>Two thoughts about MA & college students serving on jury duty:</p>
<p>1) Many cities/towns in MA conduct their own yearly annual censuses (my city conducts this yearly in March). I am not sure if this is a statewide thing, or just done regionally. In any event, the universities in my city provide a list of all students living on campus directly to the city government for census purposes. Hence these students end up on the jury duty rolls. [Is this practice common in other parts of the US? I have also lived on the West Coast and in the South and never encountered this except in Mass. - but a lot of things are like that about Massachusetts ;)]</p>
<p>2) In some parts of Mass. (particularly Western Mass), college students make up a large percentage of the population. Think about the Pioneer Valley (Smith, Hampshire, Mt. Holyoke, Amherst, UMass Amherst) for example. Hence, some number of students are likely to be called at some point.</p>