BY KARL CHANG
 |
 |
For as long as Kagan’s tenure as Dean, there’s been an inviolate, virginal air around her. At first I interpreted the deference as simply “going easy on the new kid.” Didn’t Christopher Columbus Langdell get a few weeks honeymoon before they started calling him a scallywag? Didn’t Dean Clark get 6 months before the Klan jokes kicked in?
However with Kagan, I’ve noticed something, something subtle, something hard to notice. The deferential air hasn’t dissipated. People still clap when she gives “speeches.” People still move out of the way when she says “excuse me.” This “personal deference” has translated into the public sphere.
For instance, why hasn’t The Record, or any student publication for that matter, reprinted any of the 12 Danish political cartoons of Dean Kagan? The Record is content to print anti-Semitic caricature after anti-Semitic caricature, for “illustrative purposes,” so its stated rationale, “out of respect for the Dean Kagan,” rings a little hollow. Respect Dean Kagan? Why don’t you try respecting Jews?
The fawning over Dean Kagan is understandable. She’s brings home the pork. Bread and circuses? Try pubs, coffee, and tampons. She even co-opts the Parody. Her regular appearances at every showing are just the lure to seduce investigative satirists into docile “access comedians.”
Well, you know what, Dean Kagan? I’m no stooge. You can’t buy me. I drink iced tea, and I don’t menstruate.
Here’s the truth that Dean Kagan doesn’t want you to know and nobody else has the guts to say:
While 8 inches may be robust and healthy for some things, it simply isn’t deep enough for a swimming pool. How are we to swim in such shallow water? In my experience, a swimming pool should be at least 5 times deeper. Why, thank goodness they neglected to put a diving board on that thing. I’m no medical expert in the field of osteology, but if someone were to do a cannonball, they’d break all of their limbs.
No diving board. No lifeguard. No water of swimmable depth for persons larger than smurfs. No wonder that swimming pool didn’t turn out to be the frolicking good time we all hoped it would be. Doe-eyed ladies cavorting in vivid bikinis. Strapping lads furiously flexing in fond hopes of pointing their way to that ever-elusive beach. The beach, isn’t it over… there? No, no, no, I think the beach is… thataway.
I’ve one last criticism of Dean Kagan’s Folly, one last illusion to pierce, one last truth-to-power-speakage, one last facade to rip away and expose the Dean’s new pantsuit for the nothingness it is. Timing. Doesn’t Kagan know that December, January and February are some of the coldest months of the year in Cambridge, Massachusetts? Through meticulous research on the Internet, I’ve learned that there’s the slim possibility that temperatures could fall so much that the water in the Jarvis field swimming pool would transform from a liquid into a “solid” state. How could we swim in the pool then, Empress Kagan? True, the “cold winter” scenario I’ve outlined is improbable. But what if it happens? Now that would be a total disaster.
Karl Chang, 3L, is from Houston, TX.