BOALT HALL REUNION
                    (C)1998 Alan M. Schwartz

In Berkeley California there reside the University of California 
at Berkeley, Sproul Plaza, memories of the 1960s' Free Speech 
Movement (Draft Beer not Students), Telegraph Avenue, and ditzy 
aging ex-hippy faculty so Leftist that were Lenin revived he 
would disown them as being perserverative psychotic fanatics.  My 
sweetie attended her 20th Class Reunion at Boalt Hall, the 
UC/Berkeley Law School.  She looked forward to meeting old 
friends, seeing old classmates, eating an oyster loaf sandwich at 
Blake's, and showing off her new cocktail dress at the formal 
dinner (Pipe those gams!  Whooooeeee!).  Class size is admittees 
300 maximum less attrition over three years' studies.

Nostalgia is not what it used to be.  Her friends where not to be 
found until the morning we departed, Blake's was under different 
management sans oyster loaf, and two of her academic confreres 
attended the formal dinner with long hair, (receding hairlines,) 
beards, leather jackets, and off-brand blue jeans.  All distaff 
matriculants across campus wore bras.  I have never before seen 
so many so hairy female minority undergrads.  Even corn-fed 
Michigan State University larval alumnae kept grizzled armpit 
hair tucked under their bucolic short sleeves.

I abided three days at my sweetie's 20th reunion.  Of 98 lawyers, 
about 96 were loudly proudly bolshy Liberal red-as-a-baboon's-
ass.  Of the sane two, My Linda grinds the poor and takes a cut 
of the pecuniary flow to the rich (represents landlords).  The 
other Conservative was a Black gal who turned down a cool 
$million for her law tutorial (and possibly money laundering) 
corporation.  "INERT INTELLIGENCE IS THE PARADIGM OF 
INSTITUTIONAL RACISM!" (Jews and Asians with outstanding test 
scores euchre more deserving minorities' "under-representation.") 
"REDEFINE MERIT!"

Our hosts were tap dancing a flagrant violation of California 
Regents' Order SP1 and its enforcement of overwhelmingly passed 
Proposition 209's 37 unambiguous words:

SEC. 31. (a) The state shall not discriminate against, or grant 
preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis 
of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the 
operation of public employment, public education, or public 
contracting. 

"REDEFINE MERIT!"  Faculty hogtied into babysitting us were 
soliciting alumni funds to finance importation (with the 
selective exclusion of Whites and Asians) of every genre of 
minority scum short of decent LSAT scores.  Using State money 
would be felonious, and goodbye tenure.  A vast wall poster 
demanded "diversity" in the Boalt Hall student body and invited 
written comments.  I added "mediocrity is a vice of the doomed" 
on Saturday, plus my URL.  Monday was a busy day at that wall 
poster.  My website hits picked up fabulously.

If you are queer, diseased, addicted, obscenely fat, crippled, a 
congitively dysphoric victim of toxic society, desirous of not 
paying rent, suffering/celebrating a pigmented dermis, heinously 
discriminated against for having a face abundantly tattooed (I 
tallied one), pierced with hardware (eight women, and I stopped 
counting), flat out stupid, or variously Officially Sad there are 
abundantly funded student organizations - three floors of them 
plus a professionally overseen pro bono legal clinic - to hold 
your hand and rain unlimited jurisprudential ruin upon productive 
citizenry whom you plague.  Productive folk desirous of personal 
survival must hire lawyers starting at $150/hour, which bothers 
the lawyers not a whit.  The Federalists, Boalt Hall conservative 
students, occupy a small remote room.  Whether sufficient members 
muster to merit the plural is unadjudicated.

Alumni mounted their hind legs boasted lawyerly feats.  Some 
served in the Carter Administration, lamenting the Reagan rebirth 
of retained personal income.  One portly fellow name withheld 
maintained a scowl, corners of his mouth forming a drastically 
inverted "u," the whole three days.  He was a social activist 
LL.D. sacrificing his life by spending donated money to coddle 
the disenfranchised and unempowered.  He was an angry middle-aged 
man.  Had he helped himself to a dusky hairy bra-wearing distaff 
undergrad to ease his cafard his momma might have said things 
like "Oy!" and "Feh!" at next Friday's supper.

One pleasant aspect of those to whom others' sacrifices are never 
too great is that they eat most exceptionally well.  Saturday 
dinner flaunted a battalion of shapely waitresses circulating 
crab puffs, satays, spanakopetaki, and other goodies.  It was 
cattle at a feeding trough.  Dinner boasted very credible wines 
flowing like rain-swollen Strawberry Creek outside, gratis.  A 
portion of eminently laudable rare beef misted my eyes with joy.

Berkeley's abundant homeless, hungry undergrads, and the serving 
staff were excluded from our meal.  Merit had been redefined, if 
only for an evening.