To: Students of Harvard Law School
From: Mitch Berg, Angry Dean
Re: Test Schedules
Dear Most Annoying Students in the World,
Starting at 8AM Monday morning, please line up in the front hall of the administration building in alphabetical order. You will all be issued refund checks. Because clearly we at HarvLaw have failed you as an institution.
The evidence – you all know that term, right? – is right here:
Those Harvard students have produced an open letter, in which they demand that their examinations be delayed. “Like many across the country,” its authors claim, students “are traumatized” and “visibly distressed” — to the extent that there is now a “palpable anguish looming over campus.”
I hope I’m long dead before I have people from big law firms writing me, chocking back their outrage at his institution for turning out such a vacuous pack of hamsters and calling them not only “lawyers”, but “Harvard Law School Grads”.
The “national crisis” that has been provoked by the cases of Garner and Brown, they argue, has left them with no choice but to “stand for justice rather than sit and prepare for exams.” And, like their brethren at Columbia, they contend that their “being asked to prepare for and take our exams in this moment” amounts to their “being asked to perform incredible acts of disassociation” — requests, which taken together, have led them “to question our place in this school community and the legal community at large.”
I can’t wait to see you vacuous children of boundless class privilege try that on a client in the real world; claim the violence inherent in the system makes it impossible for you to come into the office and work on your cases. But at least you won’t “question your place in the legal community at large”, because by that point you’ll be transferring to the “fast food community”.
Justifiably so.
The bottom line? That students must be given “the opportunity to reschedule their exams in good faith and at their own discretion.”
And in good faith, I, your dean, will allow you and your faith and discretion to move your exams to any time another law school will let you, provided you get admitted.
Pick up your checks. You haven’t failed. I have.
That is all.
“palpable anguish “
almost like I could reach out and caress it
Honesta Gawd.
You couldn’t make this stuff up.
“Looming palpable anguish”
I’ve heard that the Ivy’s have lowered their standards to attract “students of color”, but this is ridiculous.
Assuming all these characters passed the requisite course work, exams, and bar testing, do you think that either of the reverends would knowingly hire one or some of them to defend their cause? Particularly a serious, time-serving case like tax evasion?
Being the sole devil’s advocate in my final course (Advanced Multicultural Counseling), I was assailed with all types of justification for preferential academic treatment based on race, gender, etc.
In a rare (for me) instance of quicker thinking, I pretty much shut the argument down with the well worn, age-old retort, “Who would you choose to perform complex, life-saving surgery on you dearest loved one …”
Hardly original or brilliant, but effective none the less …
I think Palpable Anguish was an early Natalie Merchant album.
My brother is a Hahvid grad–you can tell a Harvard man, but you can’t tell him much–and when I was helping him pack his room when he graduated, he pointed to a guard shack that was maybe six feet square and asked me how much I thought it cost to put it there. My answer was very low four figures if I remember correctly, and he corrected me. It had in fact taken something like 65 grand. It was a nice guard shack, but not that nice.
I commented that with cost control like that, the value of a Hahvid MBA wasn’t as much as one would think. He then told me that, in what had been a very strong stock market the past couple of years–up 30-40%–the return on the college’s endowment was around 3% or so. I repeated my comment on the value of a Harvard MBA.
And hey, if we’re going to talk about the reputation of Harvard Law, one would think that the blatantly illegal actions of Dear Leader (Hahvid Law 1991) would have put something of a dent into the reputation of that school. No?
Judge: Mr. Prosecutor, are you ready to proceed?
Prosecutor: Yes, Your Honor.
Judge: Mr. Berg, don’t you have a lawyer?
Mitch: Yes, Your Honor, but he’s been traumatized by palpable anguish leading him to question his whole place in the legal community. He said you’d postpone the trial.
Judge: Guilty. Next case.
.