I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing

I am ashamed of myself. My actions during a tour last week directly contributed to the myth of diversity at Our Law School. It’s well known among the students that the administration at Our Law School goes out of it’s way to depict the school as a haven of diversity, despite the fact that we are 86% Caucasian. When they hold Open House for prospective students, the evening’s activities always include a Q and A session with a panel of current students—and every minority student in school is invited to join the hand-picked panel. This means that the face of the student body as presented to the prospective students is the perfectly balanced racial blend of an ABC Afterschool Special. Even more blatantly, the new recruiting brochure is filled with pictures of every minority member on faculty and many of the minority students, all looking studious and serious and full of hope (and just as cheesy as an ABC Afterschool Special). It’s practically false advertising. One of the 1Ls who I’ve gotten to know this year says that after attending the student panel and perusing the recruitment brochure, her reaction on the first day of class was, “Where are all the other Asians?”

So last week, I was giving a tour to a woman from Virginia. We were meandering through the student lounge when we ran into Pei and Dami. The two of them seem to derive an insane amount of amusement from the fact that I’m a tour guide despite my bitterness, so running into me doing a tour was cause for a great deal of giggling and squealing. But nothing too out of control and they said hello and we parted ways. I continued working my way through the law school from top to bottom and the tour was going well, with lots of questions and interest.

By the way, did you guys know that the mural in the courtroom includes the phrase “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” in Morse Code? It’s true! Look at the bottom of the big sphere and you’ll see the top row of dots and dashes.

At the tail end of the tour, we climbed the stairs to the fifth floor. Almost immediately after we came through the doors from the stairwell, we ran into Ella—the aforementioned first year. I met her through Pei and Dami, who met her at the Asian Law Student Association. She greeted us and I told her that I was taking Dixie Chick on a tour. Dixie immediately started asking Ella questions about her experience, which I thought was pretty cool. A few minutes later, Pei and Dami came around the corner and immediately started snickering. They joined in the conversation with Dixie—and seriously, no joking, I really thought that was great. Dixie happened to arrive at a day and time when she wasn’t able to observe a class, so the one-on-one (well, OK, one-on-three) interaction with other students was probably welcomed from her side. As the five of us stood there, me off to the side, it occurred to me that Dixie had observed the following interactions with my fellow students: me talking to one of the African-American students, me talking to two of the Asian students, me talking to a handful of white students, me talking to a different Asian student, Asian students talking to each other—a perfect blend of racial harmony straight out of an ABC Afterschool Special.

Dear Lord, I’ve become a tool of the Administration. Heaven help us all.