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Christmas Past...
Every one of us has our favorite Christmas, Channukah, or secular winter songs. You know which songs mean cookies baking and whispered conferences of surprises to come in your house. In mine, they're mostly Italian. Dominic the Donkey pulls Santa's sleigh up Rome's seven hills, and Santa Nicola brings an Italian bride. Festivity and food meant Christmas at our house, usually starting at dusk on Christmas eve and ending a day and a half later.
You don't have to share those memories of Christmas past with me; if you didn't grow up in Little Italy, those songs might just be silly. However, I do urge you to listen to Stevie Wonder's magnificent version of "Ave Maria."
Christmas Future...
This isn't particularly about Christmas except for the timing, but it seems that someone's trying to make trouble in the future for the U. of Texas Law School. The National Jurist is alleging misconduct in using some money (quite a lot, in fact) to lure top professors to the school. Since the state doesn't allocate the money to lure big name teachers, a private fund adds to the salary package.
I'm not sure what the fuss is about. Executives get a lot money — often an amount considered unequal and unfair. Is that news? Athletes, movie stars, CEOs and celebrities all command salaries that seem disproportionate to their contribution to society. I like Beyoncé and Billy Joel, so I pay a lot of money to see them. Benefits packages are ancient news, and not even worthy of the bandwidth they're printed on.
I'm more concerned about the allegations of gender inequality. These, too, are ancient news. Women are less famous than men, get paid less than men, are admitted to law schools in lower numbers than men, and less often reach the status that earns those fabulous "golden parachutes" we hear so much about. That offends me as a feminist, and I've tried to cause a ruckus about it in the context of law school admissions and U.S. News rankings. But it's not new, not scandalous, and not going to change any time soon.
Why? For the same reason that women's basketball doesn't command the respect that men's does. In other words, no sane reason except that people pay to see what they want to see, and women can't afford to pay what men can.
So I agree that money is used to buy what we want, and that in the salary ranges we're discussing here, it usually buys men. Why is that any more of a problem now than it has been in the past? Why is UT being scapegoated for a commonplace set of circumstances? Is it being targeted because it challenged the sacred "TOP 14"? Is the media just looking to keep stirring up the "lawyers are in trouble" pot?
I just hope that attacking lawyers becomes old news. I'd much rather talk about the national debt, endless wars, poverty, the failure of the housing market, and the end of the United States' economic supremacy. Those are the real issues in our future, not whether big names are still getting big money.
Christmas Present(s)
- Watercolor by Frits Ahlefeldt-Laurvig, used with permission.
Ever since I got a fake tree, I haven't really been happy with any of the photos, so I found this delightful watercolor on the web instead. Thanks to Frits Ahlefeldt-Laurvig for sharing his work with us.
Click on the box to open your gift. |
Under every tree there should be gifts, and mine is certainly no exception. This is the kind of gift you're not sure you wanted, like when your father gives you a new World Atlas after you got a "C" in geography. It's an illustrated explanation of the U.S. Department of Education regulations that caused the ABA to remove the accreditation from LaVerne Law School, with suggestions on what applicants should be looking for. Permission to use their data to explain the system was generously given by Sarah Zearfoss at U. Michigan and Richard Geiger at Cornell. Thanks to both, and happy Holidays to all! |
Look for more news around mid-January, after the repercussions of the December LSAT have time to be felt.