Welcome to Obiter 2020-2021
When I joined Obiter in 2018, I had a simple goal; write about law school as little as possible, and remind people that behind their academic veneer, they were far more than just students. I wrote to show people that who they were before law school was someone still worth being, that these legal identities prescribed for us were not as all-consuming as they felt.
Normally, with that goal in mind, I write about the quilted, longest, and the wispiest threads of human emotion. I write to remind people that the warring of our heart and head is at once the tragedy and the treasure of being able to feel at all. I write to remind people of their own capacity in that regard, which I find is one that most of us neglect. Feeling is not seen as a skill worth honing, worth freeing. It fell out of favour around the time smartphones became the preferred alternative to passing paper notes to your friends in class. When we began looking down at their small keys, instead of looking at each other. Just another casualty, I guess. A seemingly small price to pay for the potential and vast webs of digital human connection. Mostly, though, I write about love. It carries us and it reminds us that to hurt is to be human. Love shows us time and time again that it can be a remarkable kind of fuel.
Normally, that love is transcendent and sustaining. This year, however, the world has forced us to question that. Anger made a strong case for itself, as did protest and free speech. It turns out love only works on its own when people are willing to listen. The soundtrack of complacency was blasting too loudly for change to stand a chance.
Normally, when it comes to change that I can’t myself enact, I trust those with authority to challenge others who hold it. I trust those who know better to be those who know enough, to confront our broken ways and change them. I cede the floor to those who know better. If I were to bellow, what would it be for? Those who are seasoned to fight could say more with a whisper.
Normally. Normalcy.
Normal.
Does anyone even know what that means anymore?
What these months of pandemic and protest have stripped us of, is the very concept that the world we knew bled red blood. That our Normal could live on, that it could sustain itself, and breathe. The truth has been in front of us like a lighthouse we chose not to heed. Our Normal was broken. A dying, cold machine.
We are faced with many hard choices. To replace, or to repair. To ignore, or to hear. To learn, or to return to the way things were. It is in our hands. We can either meet this moment, or lie meekly alongside the world we thought we wanted.
This year, I will still write about love, as it is just as transcendent now as it was before. With that said, I know it is hard to believe that a newspaper can be a loving place. The writing of passionate people is often the best way to take a pulse on a culture as it lives and breathes. There is always space for love. There is always space on these pages for you and for the things you want us to hear. The floor is yours.
With that said, everything else that needs to change, will. This year, we are making a point of carving out space for the voices that need to be heard. Our profession is crucial to the enactment of change. We happen to be the next generation of lawyers, who are being sent out into the field at a time when most of our lives are being totally upended. The ways of the world that we were raised to respect are no longer law. We are holding the seeds of our own futures, social, legal, and everything in between. It is the greatest responsibility we have ever been given.
This year, no voice is too small. We must all raise our voices to speak, to stand by those who have long been leading the charge. Silence and complacency are no longer better alternatives to clashing perceptions of how to best progress. We must sometimes collide in order to later travel side by side.
I implore you to hold me accountable. I implore you to not forget that at the heart of being a law student, is the fact that we are being trained to advocate. I implore you to turn your eyes towards the world, and not just see the changes you want, but to take steps towards actually making them.
Welcome to our New Normal. Let’s make that mean something we’re proud of.