My law school, as I am told, was similar to most in that we only had half days on Fridays. Basically the only classes on Friday were in the morning, and theoretically, that means everyone has Friday afternoon off should you need to have a time to schedule something where other students are available. What this really meant was that the building became vacant by 12:01.
One Friday afternoon after classes were over, I was walking through the building and I saw a friend of mine sitting in one of the larger lecture halls with maybe 5 other people, seemingly just talking. He waved at me signaling I should come over. The large lecture halls were roughly circular and there were two entrances at either side of the front of the room, which meant that as you passed the front door, you could see everyone sitting in the room, but couldn’t see the area at the front where the professor stood. Thinking it was some sort of student group or study session (the door was open which meant no class in session / not important). I waved back and wandered right in announcing to my friend “hey whatcha up to and is there any food?” (you could invariably find where I was in law school based on which student group or presentation was offering free lunch that day).
I was literally 3 feet into the room before I looked over and saw that there were 7 people in nice suits sitting at the front of the room. I froze. I started to turn to leave and said “oops… sorry.” I knew something was off when one of them said “Don’t go; we can get you food.” The man then turned to where one of the lesser law school deans had been sitting (also hidden from view) and gave a sort of dismissal of a wave and the dean literally darted out of the room to go find some food. As a short aside, I had already had problems with some of the deans involving my paperwork for admission to law school. (long and very retarded story). So I was already a bit marked, and this did nothing to help matters.
Fuck. I had just wandered into something.
Worse… I had just wandered into something on a Friday afternoon, which very likely meant that the other law students who were there were specifically selected and asked to show up to… whatever this was by the administration. And the administration had specifically scheduled this on a Friday afternoon so that only the hand picked students would be hanging around the building. I had inadvertently walked into a relatively rare occurrence, where I should not have been.
So, realizing I couldn’t escape but also readily recognizing the flashing danger sign in my mind, I sidled over and sat down in the huge lecture hall with all of 6 students sitting in it. The nice man who had just dismissed the dean to go find me food then told me that they were from the ABA on one of the relatively infrequent site visits to the law school, and wanted to talk to some of the students there to ask us some questions and they wanted me to stay so we could talk. This was not something I was prepared for…
Basically, if you are not aware dear reader, the ABA sends out representatives to go to every law school in the country on a rotating basis. Usually, if nothing bad is happening, you get a visit every 3 or so years. If the law school is in rather precarious straits, the ABA shows up every semester to check on you. (we all know who those places are…) Written reports are made and ‘suggestions’ are given to the law school on ways to improve. (they are not suggestions).
Over the next hour and a half we talked about all manner of things related to our classes, facilities, and administration. My shining moment was when I unintentionally got one of the required classes canceled at our law school. It had apparently been in the crosshairs already since they were asking about it so it wasn’t completely my fault. They asked “what is your opinion about… X class?” and in classic form I forget there were only 6 of us in the room and I let out a stifled snort / laugh. Which drew the gaze of everyone, and directed the question to me. It was honestly involuntary. The class was possibly the worst use of credits and was the closest thing I encountered in law school to a touchy-feely class which talked about negotiation. In my defense, the other students there agreed completely with what I said about the class. My comments sorta opened the floodgates to others opinion on the class.
I found out it had been canceled per ABA request 2 weeks later.
(continued… )