|
Invitation to the BLSA Dinner: Friday, November 5, 8:00 P.M., College of William and Mary.
"A descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy."
BY RUTHANNE DOETZER
- - - -
In early November, there is a dinner, sponsored by the Black Law Students' Association. We will toast Justice And Rosa Parks before bringing out the food. We will eat and talk late into the night, We will talk and eat and forget about the winter That gathers, even in the South, outside in the dark.
By the time we leave, it will, indeed, be dark: No stars, just streetlights against a sky black And cold enough to remind us that it's winter. You should come. It's all about networking. Yeah, and justice— Doctor King's "joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity." And did I mention ... there's free food?
(Why do they always advertise the food? Are college students' social lives so dark That they must be bribed to spend one night With their fellow classmates, the members of the Black Law Students' Association? Forget all that talk about justice: Do you have anything better to do in Williamsburg in the winter?)
Not so bad, though, to be a law student in winter. (Except for those ridiculously cold bus rides to shop for food. Ironic that this colonial city is so hard on pedestrians: where's the justice In that?) Worse to study law in the spring, when it doesn't get dark Until late, but you're inside all day and everybody wears black, Like job interviews are funerals, and studies day and night.
It's a safe town, Williamsburg, safe enough to walk around at night. Far enough south to be cheap, but far enough north to have a real winter. Our university may not be urbane, but it is diverse. Fifteen percent of our students are black Or, rather, "self-identified persons of color." The undergraduates complain about the food, Of course, but the law students have more serious concerns. Law is a slippery, dark Road, the high road that sometimes, maybe, leads to justice.
Sometimes I think there's no such thing: no justice Except in the stories we tell ourselves to ward off this night Of our own making. Darkness cannot drive out the dark But will optimism, an imagined heat, keep us warm come winter? Such faith sustains itself, I'm told; it needs no other food, But I doubt the world is quite so white and black.
Anyway, where was I ... Black Student Association? Before I got sidetracked by justice? You can't go wrong with free food if you have nothing else planned for Friday night. The first social event of winter and, if we go together, neither of us will have to walk home alone in the dark.
MORE SESTINAS
|