Julio was enrolled at a prestigious law school; on the first day of orientation, the dean had welcomed him and his classmates by announcing, victoriously, that each of them were at last “off of the treadmill.” To bring home the point, he had commissioned an actual treadmill to be set on fire next to the podium; it burned for almost a minute before a burst of confetti and a fusillade of extinguishing foam rained down from the plafond above the stage. “Welcome,” the dean cried out over deafening screams from the audience, “class of 2016, welcome, welcome, welcome.” The next day, elephants from the Maharashtra province of India were brought in to march up and down one of the major walkways connecting the law school to a private tavern off-campus. On the head of each elephant sat a waving showgirl, draped in the law school colors, gold and green, each adorned with a towering plume of feathers, gold and green, atop her own glibly cheerful visage. A one-hundred-piece band trailed after them, playing the law school’s ceremonial convocation song. In the middle of the parade, they were joined spontaneously by the drunk and giddy members of an all-male undergraduate acapella group, who had just returned home from a European tour, singing self-penned lyrics light-heartedly comparing the juris doctorate program to a “finishing school for the American elite.” And trailing all of them in the very back of the procession was the dean himself, waving to the crowd of incoming students and their parents from a green-and-gold-plated barge, carried by the Dean’s Speechwriting Committee, consisting of the twelve most accomplished members of the third-year class—nine men, three women. He was flanked by five influential and well-connected professors—two men, three women—each donning elaborate gold headdresses and waving ornamental canes shaped like cobras, crocodiles, owls, and ospreys. One of the professors—a young, pretty female professor who had just published a best-selling book—shot a rocket gleefully into the air, which exploded into a brilliant green and gold firework in the shape of the school seal. “You are the elect,” the dean bellowed into a megaphone over the thunderous roar and applause of the two hundred incoming students. “You are all here because you were born to rule.” Yusuf Lulu Jax -6/25/14
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 21:06:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015