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.