Sai Kulkarni ‘23
Production Editor
In a surprising turn of events, the Law Weekly is happy to report that the school administration has actually conducted itself well this week and done something positive for the student body. Likely due to being lambasted by the Libel Show for being unresponsive to the people that matter most, our wonderful leaders have decided to be benevolent and use the excessive amounts of donor and law firm money to begin providing one free meal a day for students in the Sidley Austin café.
While initially planning to restrict this new policy to the students that demonstrate the most need, swift protest by a combination of wealthy FedSoc denizens and a suspiciously high number of NLG members who believe that their family estates don’t generate enough income to cover their meals, the administration reconsidered means testing. The deans just could not stand up in the face of this excellent demonstration of the horseshoe theory live in action. Thus, every student will, much like in an undergrad dining hall, have the ability to swipe their student ID to cover a meal costing up to eight dollars.[1] The administration chose this specific policy to coincide with the end of the mask mandate—in other words, they’ve chosen to end their willful blindness to the fact that the “eating and drinking” exception was pushed to its limits within the confines of Scott Commons. With an already existing school cafeteria, the administration expressed very clearly: “If you are going to behave like high school students, it's time you have a high school cafeteria.”[2]
In rolling out this policy, each dean conducted round table discussions with student groups. To everyone’s surprise, the Federalist Society actually did not receive a single invitation. As such, the Law Weekly looks forward to covering their future event where they can realistically claim, for the first time, that they do not have a voice at the law school. Anyway, in consulting with the other student groups, each dean did not express a hard position but rather listened to student input. With rising food insecurity amongst students, combined with the rise in inflation without any source of income for many during the school year, the deans were met with great ideas that actually focused on the same issue—regardless of student group.[3] Upon hearing all of this, the deans reconvened and were able to come up with a comprehensive policy. Their post-meeting email was transparent, well-written, and heavily publicized. The deans then went back to the student groups and encouraged them to put the information into their GroupMes.[4]
Picture Credit: restaurantguru.com
Many donors immediately began expressing concern about the new policy. The law school actually serving the students is anathema for them. In all their time as students, the administration focused on their predecessor donors. This is different. And since most of the donors are old, rich, white men, anything different immediately angers them. This is when the most surprising part of this whole saga occurred. Dean Goluboff went against every instinct in her body and told the donors to “shove it.” In an email that shocked the world, she asserted that she was going to help her students and that donors were no longer her first priority. This scandalous statement had Law IT scrambling to check if her email was hacked. One of the Law Weekly’s expert field reporters was able to confirm that Dean Golubuff did indeed send the email.[5]
This was not the end of the shock, however. It turns out that providing an actual proper meal once a day actually brought a majority of the 3L class to North Grounds for once. On the first day that these meals were being paid for, a number of professors were greeted by people they had not seen in three months. Scott Commons was not only up to peak 1 p.m. capacity, but almost double the usual amount. This policy, unlike every other, actually brought the student body together. Everyone was well-fed for the first time and no one had to scavenge for leftovers from various half-attended student org events. It is rare, but it is great to see the law school administration accomplish something good that actually serves the student body (for once).
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omk6cg@virginia.edu
[1] That’s how much a swipe was at my beloved alma mater, The Ohio State University. In order to make it easier for me to write this article, and solely for that reason, the administration chose this value.
[2] Here’s the thing, though. Even though they said this, the food at the Sidley Austin Cafe is better than anything we had at my high school. One of the few times the admin being out of touch has helped us.
[3] All of the student groups agreed on what the most pressing issue facing the student body is—a true miracle.
[4] Only the best communication mechanism, of course.
[5] That field reporter had a panic attack because they thought the world was ending. Thankfully, we were able to help them through it and they are okay now.