BY ESCUELA RICA
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After receiving nine emails on the subject from her former 1L section’s social committee, 3L Nina Palmer still does not understand the basic idea behind the class gift. Palmer, a Sears Prize winner as a 1L and Articles Editor of the Harvard Law Review, has a 6.3 grade point average and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Virginia.
“We give the school money when we graduate?” Palmer asked the earnest class representatives tabling in the Hark. “Why?””As a gift from our class,” answered an enthusiastic Anne Cratsley, former section 5 social chair.
“But…I already gave the school more than $100,000 in tuition,” said a perplexed Palmer, who wrote her senior honors economics thesis on microlending in Indonesia. “That wasn’t enough of a gift?”
“It’s from the whole class, though,” added Neil Patel, HL Central vice president. “As, like, a legacy from the class of 2008.””Is it for, you know, a bench?” asked Palmer, who will be a tax associate at Jenner & Block DC after a year clerking on the 2nd Circuit. “Rare law books? Scholarships? A portrait of a famous minority alumnus who became a civil rights leader? Something that future students can look at and say, oh, that’s from the class of ’08?”
“No,” replied Cratsley. “It’s for the unrestricted fund!”
The rest of the eight-minute conversation failed to enlighten Palmer as to the wisdom of the class gift drive, especially when the two at the table did not know why a few thousand dollars from graduating 3Ls would make an impact on the unrestricted fund of an institution with more than a billion dollar endowment. Cratsley and Patel’s further insistence that the gifts “showed support for Dean Kagan’s agenda” was met with an increasingly befuddled Palmer’s suggestion that another “We Love Dean Kagan” party, or even an humorously oversized greeting card with six hundred signatures, seemed like it would fulfill that function just as well. Finally, feeling confused and slighty dizzy, Palmer took out her wallet and tossed a twenty-dollar bill in Patel’s direction, then staggered away to throw out three months’ of Harkbox papers without looking at them.
“I still don’t get it,” Palmer admitted later. “I hope I just misheard and it’s really going for a women’s shelter in New Orleans. Then again, they didn’t even have Rice Krispy treats on the table, so I have a bad feeling.”