Two events here are stirring the racial pot at Vanderbilt. Both strike me as incredibly petty, and if you disagree with me you’re a dumbass.
First. A little bird informed me about a little incident that happened in section A. If I’m summarizing the incident as it went down, the professor put up some slides showing a storefront and it’s owner, to illustrate a point being made about contract law. The court decided that a relevant factor in dissolving the contract was the ‘education gap’ that separated the owner and the customer. The owner happened to be black, and the professor apparently said, “This doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who went to Harvard, is the education level really relevant here?” and then went on to discuss the case.
The next morning, the professor made a caveat about the previous discussion not ‘implying anything’ about education levels at large. Of course, he never said, “Hey guys, I’m not a fucking racist”, but that was the subtext. What irks me about this situation is that I’m sure some white, privileged female snob with some kind of guilt complex haughtily brought the point up to the professor in some condescending email about “watching out for” making racial subtexts that put African Americans down. Give me a break. The guy wasn’t being racist, he was making a statement about a small mom-and-pop store in the middle of DC. Stop. Being. Retarded.
Next, that same evening, there was controversy regarding the location for Bar Review (No, I can’t make this shit up). The owner of the bar graciously gave all law students a drink special on beer, and to ‘prove’ we were law students all we had to do was grab a bracelet from AB, who organized the shindig. Unfortunately for law students, last year several students alleged that the bar in question had a ‘racist’ dresscode because of some of items of clothing that were banned from the bar. Even so, AB put the bracelets in her mailbox, and what do you know, after about 10 minutes they were taken (stolen, really) by some disgruntled students who felt that the school was supporting a racist policy.
Now, leaving aside for the moment the idea that the dress code was racist (OMG disparate impact!), the actions of the ‘protesters’ are downright idiotic. Are you so afraid of the marketplace of ideas that you have to resort to covert actions to make a public statement? Are your ideas THAT intellectually bankrupt? At least stand behind your ideas and protest the location publicly (and realize that such a statement would be equally ludicrous, but would have the added benefit of showing some balls) instead of sneaking around like thieves to deprive other people of actually having a good time during some of the most stressful weeks of our lives.
In other words, we’re only 6 weeks into our law ‘careers’, chill the fuck out. If you feel like there’s a problem, address it directly instead of being a sniveling coward. Yeah, I’ll still mock you, but at least you’ll have my respect.
