Things Are Going to Slide - Chapter One Continued

I look down at the people sitting below me in the packed auditorium, curious to see who is and isn’t here. I can’t recognize the tops and backs of many of the heads, though I can pick out Gail Collins, my colleague in the Legal Aid Clinic, two rows down. Her long, thick brown braid is hard to miss.

The Dean’s factotums, Associate Deans Porter Larkin and Sue Scanlon, sit in folding chairs on either side of the podium, a few feet in front of the black walnut judge’s bench. The red, blue and gold ASU seal hangs on the wall above.

I turn slightly to scan the rear of the room. My hand shields my eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun streaming in the windows across the back wall. Photographers and reporters from several newspapers and the law school magazine hover behind the last row of stadium seating as they await the announcement. Sam Bailey Jr., the law school’s benefactor, stands in their midst, chatting up one of the reporters.

A hush settles across the moot courtroom as Dean Dodo walks in and heads toward the judge’s bench and the podium. Dodo is not his real name, of course, but nature has endowed Dean Dody with a short, heavy body and stubby limbs. How could the students not christen him Dodo?

Dean Dody sits down. Associate Dean Sue Scanlon stands and runs her hands down her tight, straight skirt, then walks to the podium, her hips swaying slightly as each red high heel touches the ground. At the podium, Sue flips her thick blonde mane a few times as if she’s in a Lady Clairol ad, clears her throat, and slowly smiles out at us. Even though everyone knows Dean Dody will be the one to announce the recipient of the endowed Chair, she commands our attention with her steely, critical gaze.

Sue announces that ASU has taken out a national ad celebrating the anniversary of Rosa Parks’ fateful refusal to move to the back of the Montgomery, Alabama bus. They’ve also hired an architect to submit plans for a civil rights memorial in the ASU law school garden. In the “New South,” universities trip over each other trying to prove their civil liberties credentials. A round of polite applause follows. She beams, as if she alone were responsible for these tributes, then sashays back to her seat.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 - Top