My Two Cents on Some Law School Topics

1. The Dress Code

I am overweight. Have been for a couple of years now. (Gym Trainer aka Torture Master even warned me that I am skating dangerously close to the thin line between my weight now and obese.)

In the interest of not looking quite as fat, I dress a bit more conservatively than my sisters. (Then again, I have always dressed conservatively, even thirty pounds ago, when I could’ve had a bit of fun. What can I say? I like black.)

So really, the Dress Code thing implemented by the library doesn’t really have any impact on me because

a) I like wearing heels, and rarely wear slippers, even when in pain from aforementioned heels, and

b) I don’t wear sleeveless stuff.

Quite frankly, I’m on the fence half the time regarding this issue.

Part of me is against it because hello, we’re in UP. The bastion of all things casual and natural and not rigid. If I wanted to be all stiff and maporma and anal-retentive, I’d have gone to Rockwell or something.

Also, think of all the people who aren’t lucky enough to have been born to families who can afford to spring for spiffy duds (whatever). These people are here to learn. They get sent here by their parents, who make sacrifices, who have dreams for a future dependent on their kids being able to make it as lawyers. They have enough for rent, for food, for books, for readings, for transpo. To ask for more of their parents would be unfair. To tell them that they can’t get to the things they need to learn because they’re wearing slippers which are probably the only footwear they can afford (or if they’re saving their nice shoes for some special days), is to tell them that they aren’t enough for this place in a way that I feel is more degrading than a professor telling them they’re not smart enough.

That being said, there’s a part of me that would like to see a bit of a dress code in school.

Why? Because we should show a bit of respect for our professors who make an effort to clean themselves up by making sure we don’t go to class all prepped for a saturday night out. If we can make an effort to blow dry our hair, to put on makeup, etc, maybe we can find the time to put on clothes a little longer on the hemline, the little higher on the neckline.

If you’ve got it, flaunt it. I get that. But at our ages (20-70 or whatever), shouldn’t we be finding in ourselves a bit of recognition of the fact that we are still in a professional school, and therefore should act like professionals?

Contradictory, I know, but in my mind it makes plenty of sense.

2. Equal Treatment and Protection

My biggest argument against the Dress Code issue is this:

We have time to comment on the clothes other people are wearing, but we don’t take the time to see to it that students receive equal treatment?

By this I mean the people who can forum shop to their hearts’ content while others have to make do with whichever terror of a teacher they get through block enlistment. Who can pick this teacher and pick that teacher and somehow get commended for competing the wrong way?

The people who flunk pre-reqs and are allowed to take the subjects they were prereqs for concurrently. And will graduate earlier than most people who don’t quite have the connections needed. (Graduate AT ALL, actually).

While, of course, SOME people will just have to deal with being delayed a year, sorry nalang.

The people who can share a cig here, a cig there, and manage to pass what others couldn’t.

The people who get to stay when some people are told to go.

Seriously?

Tell me what to wear, check.

Tell me that I’ll just have to deal with the fact that I will not be allowed to take a certain class due to flunking a prereq while the person who set the precedent is walking blithely on to a future I can only hope will be totally fucked up? (if there is any fairness in this world at all), check.

Don’t address the unfairness of it all?

Check.