ISSUE VI Inside This Issue: --------Letter From The Editor: The Art Of Finding Your Fuel (BY: Minji Reem)
New sstand News Going the Distance: How Tim Wu’s Campaign Engaged Law Students and Alumni (BY: Prateek Vasireddy) My CLS Photoessay: People’s Climate March (BY: Bassam Khawaja) Tired (BY: Luis Gabrielle Hoyos) Reflections on Ferguson (BY: Aurra Fellows) Talk of the Toaster A Look Inside My CLS Backpack: Maro Cloarec (BY: Erica Navarro) My Book Report: The Bluebook (BY: Anthony Lauriello) A Legal Lion’s Livery: Evelyn Pang & Medum Choe (BY: Erica Navarro) Judiciously Reviewed -Book Reviews: Back to School Picks (BY: Nicole Tortoriello)
Opinions Op-eds
Reconsidering Rape: The Conundrum of Silence (BY: Lane Feler) The Autumn Effect (BY: Tochi Onyebuchi) Bypassing The Low Hanging Fruit: Staying True To One’s Fuel (BY: Arielle Reid) Columns [Modern Money Network] Cheap Victories – Modern Money & The Roots of Campaign Finance Reform (BY: Raul Carrillo, Genia Gokhmark, Rohan Grey, Maria Cecilia Schweinberger)
The Monocle
Cover Image: Bonbons and Fuel (BY: Minji Reem) Etched in Stone (BY: Lauren Kim) The Adventures of Captain Damos: Part VI – Manoeuvres (BY: Levon Golendukhin) The Dock (BY: Nelson Hua) Crackers (BY: Anonymous) Longing (BY: Jae Park) No Such Flower (BY: Minji Reem) Peach After Storm (BY: Minji Reem)
VOL. 6 // SEPTEMBER 2014
THE ART OF FINDING YOUR FUEL What fuels your fancy hat?
In this issue of The Muckraker, you will find an amalgam of impassioned voices that comprise the very fuel that drives the CLS community – the call for crucial conversations about the University’s sexual assault policy, driven by a love of law and faith in its possibilities; calls for collective action in response to Ferguson, Missouri and police brutality, driven by compassion and a burning desire to fight for justice; the story of how Tim Wu, students, and alumni, driven by a zest for policy reform, ran a political campaign. So with that, dearest readers, I proudly present to you Issue 6: The Art of Finding Your Fuel. I invite you to explore, to engage, and most importantly, to challenge yourself to find your fuel.
Reconsidering Rape:
Going the Distance: How Tim Wu’s Campaign Engaged Students and Alumni
The Conundrum of Silence Even though I am (for lack of a better word) a victim, what I ultimately care about is law, and law’s ends. I care that the law provides justice to those who desire it, and I care that we, even as students, do all that we can to make that possible. My legal interests lie outside of sex and gender, but my baseline mindfulness of law’s possibilities–of how experience can and should inform–drove me to speak on the issue of sexual assault in this community. Words are power and can empower, but grasping for them can be an overwhelming thought for someone who has been exploited. But if I speak alone, my view becomes the only view, and that is inherently problematic in the practice of discourse and particularly in the formulation of law. Just as there are diverse experiences within cultural, racial, and ethnic groups, so are there many viewpoints among those who have experienced sexual assault. - Lane Feler, 3L
Reflections on Ferguson
[L]uis and I focused on building coalitions. This idea was fundamental to what we wanted to do with the photograph. We wanted everyone to think critically about police brutality, whether it affected them directly or not. … What do we want the history books to say about how our generation responded to injustice? Do we want to be viewed as apathetic and impotent, or resourceful and diligent? Progress is a process. It’s not neat, sexy, or glorious, and it’s certainly not a discrete moment in time. “The Revolution will not be televised,” ladies and gentlemen. It will be shouted. It will be bled. -- Aurra Fellows, 3L
[T]im Wu and his campaign staff meant to challenge the traditional categories. As former campaign manager and CLS ‘12 alumna Nona Farahnik described it, Professor Wu brought an “entrepreneurial free spirit” to his candidacy for lieutenant governor, even as he stuck to his position as a “modern-day trustbuster,” taking aim at the concentration of economic power in our society. - Patrick Vasireddy, 3L Echo-chambers remake themselves to fill a void. Without the physical presence of my like-minded classmates at school, those It is our duty as law students public-servants-in-the-making fighting and responsible citizens to constantly against the apathy and hostility challenge and take action endemic in the idea that none of these things against injustice. That is why matter, I am left with a Facebook assembly BLSA and LaLSA commit to that has grown louder. focus our advocacy efforts this year towards addressing Seeing it all, the conflagration of Ferguson, police brutality and abuse of MO, through a computer screen, hearing it in power against people of color a phone call, reading about it on blogs, I can and other minorities. We will hang up or close the browser. And I can walk host several events out into the night, head to that ice cream shop throughout the year on these across the street and forget. But my country is issues, and we invite the never far from me, even when it’s 3,000 miles entire Columbia Law away. community to join us. - Tochi Onyebuchi, 3L - Luis Gabriel Hoyos, 3L
The Autumn Effect
Tired
Bypassing the Low Hanging Fruit:
Staying True To Oneself
That’s what Columbia Law students, both in my imagination and in reality, do. They climb higher than what’s easily within reach. They make their own decisions, and boldly stand behind them, even when all of their friends decide to go a different route. The luxury of being at this particular law school makes that choice possible. - Arielle Reid, 3L