Phil Tonseth ‘21
Staff Editor
As one of the resident animal experts on the Law Weekly staff,[1] it is my duty to pass along all of my Animal Planet knowledge to my fellow students who are too skimpy to splurge on cable. However, this article will be a throwback, looking at my favorite animals: dinosaurs. Pontificating about the pros and cons of various dinosaurs won’t keep your attention, as I cannot compete with the brilliance of The Good Dinosaur, The Land Before Time series, and all of the Jurassic Parks, but telling a “gunner” that they resemble a triceratops more than a T-Rex may bruise an already massive ego and hopefully keep you reading. Props if you can identify which dinosaur I see myself as.
Tyrannosaurus Rexes (T-rex) were seen as the kings of the dinosaur world, which easily analogizes to gunners and their position within the Law School, right? Take a seat, millennials, and let me boomer you for a second. Gunners are the try-hards of the Law School, so from a naming standpoint, they easily match try-ceratops (yes, I know it’s triceratops, but work with me here). Gunners come across as aggressive, peacocking their position and immense knowledge of random hypotheticals to intimidate others. Have you ever seen a triceratops? Those horns are all for show, hoping to scare away anyone who could challenge them because deep down they’re pretty wimpy. It’s pretty blatant when a gunner is in your class, just as it would be obvious to see a triceratops in the wild (secret: they’re massive). However, there’s no bark to the bite of a gunner. Grades are all made up and stumping teachers with ridiculous fact patterns doesn’t translate into anything in the real world. Triceratops look scary, but they’re herbivores, meaning the only thing afraid of a triceratops is the grass on the ground.[2] Likewise, the plant materials used for gunners to write their finals on are more afraid of the professor’s copious amounts of pending red ink than the gunner’s “wisdom”.
The true T-rexs of the Law School are the moochers that take the “collegiality” of UVA to its full extent. You know the ones I’m talking about. They live in the snack office while drinking a gallon of the free MyLab coffee a day and hovering by the free food table after every club lunch for leftovers. These moochers come across as aloof, the cool kids, and are always around when you don’t want them there. Come exam time, these kids are asking for old outlines from every club they can find, not to supplement their own, but to simply save on their computer and bum as their own. Nobody likes these kids, just like T-rexs. They rode Jurassic Park’s success to become a feared dinosaur, but what real work did they do in the movies? They only either ate goats that were tied down for them (RIP in peace to the goat), ate the poachers dumb enough to challenge them, or scared off the velociraptors that did the actual work and ate their food. Total moocher, nobody likes either.
Everyone should know what a velociraptor is before they watch a dinosaur-inspired movie. If not, they quickly introduce themselves with exuberant arrogance and skill, even though they’re pretty small in stature. Same goes for the overzealous softball players around UVA Law. For both of these characters, everything, and I truly mean everything, is a competition. Trying to hit the ball to Darden, equivalent to attempting to eat all of the kids in the Jurassic Park movies, is just overkill. Establishing dominance in slow pitch softball does just as much for your social standing as preying on weaker dinosaurs—absolutely nothing. I’ll be the first to admit that I enjoy doing the softball on occasion, but purposefully hitting the ball at the nice lad in right field who’s just there to enjoy a break from the library is not a cool move. UVA Law doesn’t have a Chris Pratt (to my knowledge) to tame all of the overzealous softballers, so check yourself, washed up high school athletes.
Soaring overhead, inspiring both a sense of protection and fear, is the benevolent pterodactyl (I will fight to my death that the “p” is not silent, it sounds cooler when pronounced). UVA Law’s pterodactyl is Dean Goluboff. I’ve only heard amazing things about her, but if there’s anyone who can both ruin and/or quick start our careers, it’s her. Similarly, pterodactyls soar from above, where they can easily swoop in to protect their young or utterly demolish anything in its path. The omnipotence of both pterodactyls and Dean Goluboff leave me venerating their existence, while also hoping I never run into them in an empty classroom.
Steady, consistent, reliable, and larger than life describe both brontosauruses and our Student Affairs staff and peer advisors. Both of these are always looking out for the little people, even though brontosauruses only do this because they are legitimately massive. In caring for the little people, these two groups become “ole reliable” around UVA Law, whereby 1Ls know they have a safe home to go to in case of crisis (or for free snacks and mentorship). In every movie, it’s a very unwise move to mess with a brontosaurus, as they can destroy you both with their thunder thighs, their ridiculously long and strong tail, and giraffe inspiring neck. I haven’t interacted with any PA or Student Affairs staff that wouldn’t fight for 1Ls with the same vigor.
Sadly, there’s a lot of dinosaur deniers out there. In the same light, a lot of my peers don’t believe 3Ls exist. It’s very rare to say you’ve seen a dinosaur in person, nor a 3L, especially after Thanksgiving break. 3Ls are thus synonymous with fossils, as there’s proof dinosaurs exist, but it’s very rare to actually see one in the wild.
Some kids are often seen too much, especially in their pursuit of a significant other. As a law degree leaves us with crippling debt, what better way to leverage your future than attempting to marry a med school or Darden student and assume doubly crippling loans? Always attempting to be flashy while traveling in packs, these love seeking students are stereotypical Stegosauruses. They don’t have a lot to offer, they’re flashier than they are useful (have you seen how cool their spikes are?!), but are willing to stand and graze hoping that something comes by that wants their attention. While both are rarely successful, props must be given to both these students and dinosaurs for consistently putting their A-game out there with little recognition.
A lot of people can be hard-headed here, especially 1Ls. There is no more perfect dinosaur for these kids than the Pachycephalosaurs. I highly doubt you recognize this dino by name, but if I say that this dino literally has a skull shaped like a basketball meant to run into things like a ram, hopefully a light goes off (unless you’ve tried to do the same thing yourself with a normal human skull). While it will probably be hard to convince the people that fit this personality of their dinosaur doppelgänger, hopefully their brains aren’t as small as their dino counterpart to account for their massively stubborn skulls.
For the rest of the students, a Pteranodon is your fit. If that name brings up blank stares, think Petrie from Land Before Time. Petrie was always jovial, as these students are mainly here for a good time. However, both Petrie and these students are panicky and anxious in times of stress. More often than not, both are “small but mighty” and are happy as long as they are with friends. Even if they don’t really know what’s going on most of the time, they survive and are generally liked by most!
---
pjt5hm@virginia.edu