Anna Bninski ‘23
Features Editor
Mason Pazhwak ’23
Foreign Correspondent
On Wednesday, April 13, the Law School held a belated Halfway Toast for the Class of 2023. (Although the event was delayed from the reasonable halfway point of January until closer to the two-thirds mark of the 2Ls’ law school career, that definitely seems like a better deal than the Zoom toast that COVID forced on the Class of 2022.) Two Law Weekly correspondents attended the Toast.
Anna: The first edition of the Law Weekly that I ever encountered (as a visiting prospective student) covered the Midway Toast for the Class of 2021. It was on the front page, if I recall correctly. I thought, “That seems like a weird, self-congratulatory event for people who are privileged enough to be at UVA Law. Isn’t celebrating the fact that you’re halfway through an academic program setting the bar kind of low? Also, why is it news? Is anyone interested in reading about that?”[1]
Joke’s on me. Turns out, law school is hard, especially in a pandemic, and it’s really nice to have a big celebratory gathering with people you know well, vaguely know, and have literally never seen.[2] Particularly when there are personal snack trays (easily taken home or to the library), as well as cupcakes. I was particularly pleased to note that to pair with the glasses of bubbly (both alcoholic and not), the snack trays included literal tiny toasts.
For the toast proper, Dean Risa Goluboff made remarks that expressed hope for the rest of the Class of 2023’s law school career—academically, socially, and professionally.
A serenade from a large choir of professors was the standout of the event, in my opinion. With the preface, “We wanted to do a mashup, but we couldn’t figure out what that was, so it’s a medley”[3] and the leadership of Professors Barbara Armacost and Anne Coughlin, some twenty faculty and administration members blessed the 2Ls with parodic versions of “Leaving On a Jet Plane” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
Professors Serenading Students at the Midway Toast
Mason: As a 2L, I think I can safely say that we are the UVA Law class that has borne the brunt of the COVID pandemic and everything it has entailed. Even as the illness retreats and life returns to normal, we remain a class that experienced a 1L year that, looking back, seems almost unbelievable in comparison to what we have now and that was sometimes absurd on reflection.[4] The measures imposed severely impacted our lives as law students, and we went through it without the benefit of the previously built social connections of the Classes of 2021 and 2022. Meanwhile, we could only dream of the many freedoms returned to the Class of 2024. This is all to say that a lot was lost for us, and while it may have served the important purpose of slowing down a deadly disease, it nevertheless made many feel that we were something of a lost class. Walking into a Class of 2023 Midway Toast already delayed by several months due to COVID measures, I am sure I was not the only one who could sense this history hanging invisibly in the air.
Dean Goluboff, in her remarks, acknowledged what had happened and the sentiment it created, but instead of dwelling on the past, she called for us to look to the future and all of the possibilities of the time we have left here at UVA Law as the Class of 2023. This was accompanied by funny, heartwarming, and well-sung musical numbers by our professors in what was a Midway Toast first, uniquely created for the Class of 2023. I know that I, like many others, couldn’t help but smile as they showed that they understood what we had experienced and welcomed us to look forward to better days in our little law community at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I thus found the whole experience to be cathartic, not only for its traditional purposes of being a celebration of making it halfway through law school and an opportunity to reconnect as a class, but also as a goodbye to a first half defined by the pandemic and the welcoming of a second act that might rehabilitate our battered class. Perhaps it was the background of gorgeous spring weather, the promise of an exciting summer, a few glasses of champagne, or several excess containers full of snacks and cupcakes, but I couldn't help but leave the Midway Toast feeling quite pleased for having attended and optimistic for the future of the UVA Law Class of 2023.
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amb6ag@virginia.edu
mwp8kk@virginia.edu
[1] I still have no answers as to whether coverage of the toast has any actual appeal to the Law Weekly readership.
[2] I could blame COVID, but I’m also kind of a hermit and enjoy going to sleep at 9 p.m.
[3] Clearly, Professor Ruth Buck was not consulted.
[4] I want to give honorable mentions to the outdoor universal masking phase of the pandemic, the rule on wearing masks while using already distanced cardio machines in the North Grounds gym, r/UVALaw Reddit wars, and, most notably (and destructively to social cohesion), the UVA policy of encouraging classmates and future colleagues to tell on each other for real or perceived violations of COVID measures.