BY RECORD STAFF
The Harvard Law School Publicity Office announced Tuesday that it will launch a new magazine that “will actually reflect life at HLS.”
“We suddenly realized that the alums we’re sending these magazines to actually went to school here,” Publicity Officer Michael Armini said, slapping his palm to his forehead. “They know too much about what it’s like here to buy our flowers-and-sunshine propaganda.”
Armini said alumni disillusionment became apparent after the launch of Harvard Law Today, which ran ‘exposés’ such as: “Student-Professor Socializing Proliferates – And We Mean the Platonic Kind” and “Gropius Complex Dubbed Brilliant Solution to Student Housing – There’s Just Nothing Like Communal Bathrooms.”
“Our intent was to show how going to HLS is as much fun as partying in Miami,” Armini confessed. “But somewhere along the way, we forgot that it’s not.”
He continued: “All these years, we’ve been selling the ‘HLS lifestyle’ like a Palm Beach timeshare, where perhaps — and I’m just going out on a limb here — it might have improved alumni relations to depict HLS as an evolving community that faces real-life challenges.”
Some HLS students have expressed confusion about the content of Harvard Law Today.
“The Bulletin, well, it’s just kind of harmlessly irrelevant,” Evan Belosa said. “But Harvard Law Today — sometimes I think they just make stuff up.”
Belosa continued: “For example, after I read their article on how awesome the Gropius Complex is, I decided to re-up for a third year of Grope living. Now I’m stuck in a 10-by-10 room with cinderblock walls and fluorescent lighting – do you know how hard it is to get action under fluorescent lights?”
Another student, Neil Cave, complained: “The first time I read Harvard Law Today, I tried to figure out why I’d never seen that many smiling students. Then I discovered that they’d just paid students to pretend to be happy for the pictures. I was relieved.”
Law School Dean Robert Clark denied that Harvard Law Today was part of an administration attempt to make HLS look good.
“What we’re really interested in getting out to alumni is the truth,” he said. “As long as we don’t have to acknowledge pesky problems like falling minority enrollment, bickering professors, and, well, anything having to do with Charlie Nesson.”
According to Armini, the new paper will include a number of new features.
“We thought we’d try something new and write about things that happen at HLS — we’ll start small and just cover events, then build up to controversial issues like student reaction to the new ice cream machine in the Hark,” he said. “Someday — but only if we get administrative support — we may even try interviewing real students.”