The library resembles a refugee camp. Tired, wretched, huddled masses yearn to breathe free. Spent coffee casings and Red Bull shells litter the ground around us. Some of us have found religion. Most of us have lost it.
It is finals season at law schools across this great nation, and we are captives in this place of books. Chained to our desks by pure fear of failure, we struggle to find hope in the blue skies behind these prison bars. We search for solace in each other, but find only despair. Brooks was here. Now even Brooks is gone.
After I wrote my letter from a Boston jail, I received a quite eloquent and innovative response from a fellow captive in Naperville, Ill. This lovely young lady, one Miss Caitlin Branisel, unfortunately shares our plight. After corresponding almost daily all year, we came up with a solution.
Now, as the last strain of a harmonica playing Dixie floats across the prisonyard, I realize the time is now.
This is why today I am commencing a lawsuit against law schools across the nation. My claim?
Final examinations should be made a tort.
If not a tort in and of themselves (since there really ought to be a law against them), finals do give rise to several potential claims. At the very least, law schools are engaging in what we lawyers like to call intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Law schools have exhibited a clear and systematic pattern of extreme and outrageous conduct. It’s obvious that there is a direct causal link between the inevitability of finals and the emotional catastrophe that my colleagues’ emotions have become.
Just look at the result. Law schools are one phone call away from becoming a Tom Wolfe book. Fact: Law students have the highest incidence of mental disorders among population subsets in the United States. Inmates in mental institutions finished a not-so-close second. Distress doesn’t even begin to cover it. This is anguish personified.
There are other claims. Because, of course, there always are. Law schools could be subject to strict liability for ultra-hazardous or abnormally dangerous activities. We also have the notion of an attractive nuisance. That is, law schools lure unassuming students into a den of sin. I’ll concede that that claim is mostly geared towards children playing around abandoned amusement parks, but we’re arguably still children, at least mentally. We still giggle uncontrollably when someone says ‘duty.’ Heck, we could even raise a constitutional claim and invoke the Eight Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
What we are asking for is several forms of relief. The first is the injunction prohibiting finals from going on. That will be a victory in and of itself. And then there’s the money. Obviously we would be privy to punitive damages. We’d then be able to get restitution for pain and suffering, lost wages and, especially, medical expenses.
Most importantly, we should be compensated for loss of enjoyment. There’s a few of us who enjoy law school, and, on occasion, I’ll count myself among them. But this is clearly a case of Stockholm Syndrome. For the most part, we no longer are able to enjoy anything: weeknights, Saturdays, even drinking cannot be had without paralyzing guilt. That sounds like loss of enjoyment to me. Any reasonable jury filled with reasonable people should reasonably be expected to understand how reasonable our request is.
So yes, we ought to get some compensation. And this, a class action suit, is how we get rid of the wickedness of finals, once and for all. I am confident that, if elaborately framed and asserted with confidence, the case will stand. And if it does not, then there is always the alternative.
Deny us? Then, like the great philosopher Daffy Duck once said, “Of course you know, this means war.”
United all, we are about to bring La Revolucion upon the madness that is law school and the evil that is finals.
Yes, professors might have a few advantages. Their seating charts give away our position. Even if we move, they have headshots. Some brave students will fall. More tragically, professors have the power to adjust our grades. Some may go from a B to a B minus. Some may even befall the career-killing catastrophe that is the eternal shame of a C, but that is a sacrifice we must be willing to make.
Because never have the stakes been higher, and never has victory been so close. We have the numbers. We have the heart. We have nothing to lose. We will fight until we are welcomed back by our wives and husbands, the parade going down Main Street as small children wave their little flags.
We shall launch our 500-pound casebooks from a trebuchet set low on the valley. We shall rush the fields swinging our laptop cords above our head, pushing along in the rolling chairs of the library that are now permanently molded to our buttocks. We shall communicate through GChat. We shall be sponsored by Starbucks and whoever makes Adderall. We shall send the classholes as our first wave, raising their hands to the bitter end. The LLM’s will be next, boasting their diverse methods of hand-to-hand combat. And the rest shall follow.
Because in less than a week, law students from here will join others from around the country. And we will be launching the largest battle against finals in the history of mankind. Mankind — that word should have new meaning for all of us today. Perhaps it is fate that today is the 25th of April, and we will once again be fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression or persecution — but from final examinations.
We’re fighting for our right to live, to exist. And should we win the day, the 25th of April will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when law students declared in one voice: “We will not go soberly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to get drunk! We’re going to imbibe!” Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!
Carlos Maycotte, a first-year student in the School of Law, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].
