Everything Mr. Excellent said.
I am also a 1L law student.
I am a woman.
I really think you’re overreacting by caring about it in even the slightest way.
This will ruin your job prospects. This and the fact the the guy in the apartment below you smokes pot, and the lady who lived next door to your family when you were in fourth grade was a Castro sympathizer, and the guy you stood behind in the gift-paper line on Decemebr 23, 1998 was in fact lactose-intollerant. All of these things put your job prospects in peril, but this latest one, this, this, “girl” who has “modeled” for “pictures”, well BC might as well burn is ABA acreditation and board up the windows.
I think it all comes down to what the definition “is” is?
You (in the general sense) can many types of personality quirks or delusions and are almost by definition unable to see them for yourself. Be careful not to apply law thinking to everything in the world. Law-think isn’t the only valid way of looking at things and it can make someone a good lawyer but dysfunctional human.
This bizarre anecdote of yours has shown that someone has shit in the swimming pool of your mind and there is no one to drain it but you.
Where it is so clear that it has nothing to do with you – as the case is here, as demonstrated by the responses to your OP – and it is demonstrable that you do not suffer from some sort of mental defect, and nonetheless, your initial reaction is the reaction you expressed in your OP, the necessary conclusion is you are entirely too self-centered – at least on a knee-jerk level. This isn’t even close. Your efforts to make it so bespeak self-centeredness.
Ditto. Except (female).
Should I have included a :dubious: or some other sign that I was being flippant, having learned my lesson?
I get it. It’s not as big a deal as I imagined it to be, either for me or for the school. I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. Even if all I’m doing is making a slightly larger molehill out of a molehill, that’s still too much.
Nevertheless, there has been a significant degree of unease in the female student population over this. So regardless of my own feelings, there has been a negative reaction to it on campus. So I’d like to examine that OUTSIDE the context of the law school (which can have a sequestering effect sometimes).
Therefore, can we get back to answering the questions about whether anyone else feels any kind of unsettlement about it, or shall we just continue threadshitting and psychoanalyzing? I’d prefer the former.
To get back on-topic, then, and to re-frame the argument in a less controversial manner:
- Would you feel unsettled by something like this? How much so?
- Why or why not?
- Of what gender are you?
“So Mr. Hero Pup, your transcipt is outstanding. Isee you pased the bar on your first try. Community service is excellent and…wait a second, isn’t Boston College the school where that girl posed for those pictures. How could you let that happen? This shows a complete lack of control and moral aptitude.”
“But I don’t even know that girl!”
“Even worse, because I was hoping you could hook me up. Next!”"
- Would you feel unsettled by something like this? How much so?
No. Her pics are none of my business, she has the right to freedom of expression, and no one interviewing me would dare pose the question “So… how about that hot chick that posed semi-nude? What’s she like?”
- Why or why not?
I’m not uptight, not concerned about nudity, and even less concerned about what someone that I am not related to or responsible for does with her free time.
- Of what gender are you?
Female. And that chick is hot.
Unease from the female population? Could some of that be attributed to jealousy? Any of your co-eds could pose and bask in the attention. If they don’t want that kind of attention, they shouldn’t pose.
Maybe you should sue her.
Good God man, this is all you have to worry about?
It’s her business, not yours. IF someone in an interview asks you how you feel about it:
- They won’t.
- See # 1.
By the way, black is her color, the gold and maroon really don’t do a lot for her.
So sometime this year law students or faculty members at your school will collectively do all of the following:
[ul]
[li]Get married[/li][li]Get divorced[/li][li]Have a baby[/li][li]Get a speeding ticket[/li][li]Get a DUI[/li][li]Buy a house[/li][li]Sell a house[/li][li]Act like an asshole in public[/li][/ul]
Will any of these actions have an effect on you getting a job?
Neither will this chick in a couple of photos.
Jeez I had always heard that people in Boston were prudes, but this is over the top. You have your butt clenched so tight over this, I don’t think you could drive a toothpick up it using a sledgehammer. :dubious:
It’s not even a molehill.
There’s not even a mole.
When I was in college, women on campus were protesting the Rolling Stones song Under My Thumb for lyrics degrading to women.
Really, no one outside of that isolated bizarro academic world gave a shit, and precious few in it did either – but the ones who did were noisier. You will understand that better when you are out of it.
A beautiful woman! Showing off her body!
Ugghh! Double uggghh!!! Disgusting! I feel physically ill. Hurry, somebody get me a bucket! UGGHHH! [Vomits]
How can this be? Have we really fallen to such depraved depths? The whole moral fabric of our society has just been critically compromised. Our death, and subsequent burning in hell, is now imminent.
Now, THAT I think most of us can understand, whether we agree or sympathize or not, or both.
As in: I AM sympathetic to the notion that young female would-be professionals have an image to uphold. BUT: (A) That they even HAVE to worry about how this will affect their image, is an indictment of the establishment, not of this one woman; the “this makes *US * look bad” reaction, means they perceive, rightly or wrongly, that they will NOT be judged fairly on individual merit by that establishment. And (B) I am mildly disappointed that the reaction is to be so upset, rather than to assertively say “I pity the fool who tries to hold THIS over ME.”
So in a way what’s more unsettling to me (on this, International Working Woman’s Day) is that women as a group even HAVE to worry about things like this. And that individual women have to worry about lack of solidarity if they don’t conform to it.
Heck, let’s even take the thing mentioned earlier, the so-called “character” evaluation. Rick just put it quite succintly. Why is, in this day and age, a cheesecake pinup of a female law student seen as having potential ill effects? It’s just sad.
(And don’t get me started on the women who’d be upset because they think women should be free to be and do anything except things like this…)
So
- I’m more unsettled at the reaction than at the event
- Because see above
- M
The gal in the picture is kinda skinny, and a little harsh looking, but I’d hit that.
Did get a good chuckle out of her interview, though.
I think (or I like to hope) that we all strive to make a positive impact in this world while we’re fortunate enough to be here. I feel like the legal system will provide me with the necessary tools and direction to affect change in the world, and contribute to the ongoing fight for social justice.
Hehe. Starry eyed world changers are so cute when they’re in school. 
…and the edit window closed on me, but I must also agree something like this gets hyperamplified in the resonance chamber of the school, specially where there is such a concern about how well you’ll interview, if you’ll get picked up by a Firm, if Holy Crap what this is costing me and the debt I am incurring, etc.
Hey, chances are that the reason any given BC graduate is not picked by one of the Top Howevermany Firms has nothing to do with that a student posed for a pin-up, and everything with that there’s two thousand other applicants just as good and lookee here, the SP’s grandnephew happened to just have passed his bar exam…
Did you read the part about her desire to stay home, cook, clean house and raise babies? While those are laudable goals (she basically describes MY day, except for the cooking and cleaning part), it does make one wonder why she bothered going to law school. Professor Linda Hirshman argues that women like her do their gender a huge disservice and contribute to the glass ceiling.
Of course, that assumes her answers were legitimate, and not merely a way of pandering to male fantasy in order to sell more product.
And it has nothing to do with her being mostly nekkid.
Look, forget about the babe. The half-nekkid babe is NOTHING compared to the threat posed to your career by your OP. If somebody somehow connect your SDMB username with the real you, and reads that OP, THEN you’ll have something to worry about, alrighty. They’ll be going, “This dude has some SERIOUS problems with risk assessment. He’s sweating the threat posed by some woman he’s never even met posing not even naked for a third rate local laddie mag. Probably rides a bicycle in traffic every day without a helmet. We don’t need this kind of fuzzy thinking in OUR organization, especially someone who’s supposed to be a lawyer.”
Seriously, I don’t think you should be at all worried about the scenario I just conjured up. It’s extremely improbable.
But it’s a hell of a lot more probable than your weird paranoid fantasy about losing a job because someone you don’t even know took off her shirt in front of a camera.
It appears I’m going to buck the tide. Female, lawyer, OCI survivor from both sides of the table. As in, I’ve interviewed on a law school campus (and got a job out of it), and I’ve interviewed on law school campuses (and invited a number of law students to come into the office for a full day interview). I understand your concern, I understand why people outside the system don’t get it, but I think you may be overestimating how big an issue it is.
If you’re talking BigLaw, we’re all snobs. We make snap judgments about recruits based on where they went to school. Hell, there are some firms that won’t even take your resume unless you’re at a tier 1. But you’re at BC, which is tier 1 and pretty well known, particularly regionally. The fear I’d have is that outside New England, where BC isn’t as well known, all people would know about it is that some moronic chick who doesn’t know the difference between effect and affect decided to strip for some cheap magazine. BFD. Now, my law school, we routinely had alums arrested either for being call girls or for running a call girl ring. But we still had employers lining up for OCI.
I think that the vast majority of employers will steer away from that question. It certainly won’t come up at OCI. It might come up at a callback, particularly at a dinner. I think that the response is a blank stare and, “Sorry, who? I don’t know her.”
Sorry, but that misses the point. The bigger issue is this: BC is supposed to be a good school. Top 25, I think. Consequently, one expects that its student body reflects that caliber. This article, however, paints a picture of a BC student who is not intellectual, who seems to have poor decision-making skills, and who exercises poor judgment. If she is reflective of BC as a whole, or even simply reflective of a significant element in the BC population, we need to screen our BC recruits more carefully to ensure we don’t get any like her.
That does affect the BC student’s ability to get a job. And you 1Ls out there, don’t fool yourselves. We know all your professors. We know who the easy graders are. We know how to calculate your GPAs even if your school uses some arcane system. Our hiring committee will sit and discuss you, and your choices in classes, and your grades, and whether your professors are hard or easy, and whether you’re journaling or moot courting, and on and on. Because when we hire you for the summer, we are investing far more in you than simply your salary.
This does matter. But it’s fleeting. So don’t sweat it, Happy. Lawyers who end up salaciously displayed across the web are, unfortunately, a dime a dozen. Like, for example, the lawyer on ATL who used an emoticon in a court filing. Frankly, that’s embarrassing.
And I’d like you to explain what “fratboy” means in that context.