Last month at the public interest auction a group of people in my section won a night of karaoke with our civil procedure professor, our legal writing professor, and our legal writing professor’s husband (who happens to be an actor on the Wire). Well last week it was time to pay the piper. The group of us spent all week in a state of giddy anticipation. It seems incredibly nerdy, but we were all pretty excited to see what our profs were like outside of the academic setting, especially while singing embarrassing karaoke songs. Also I think the fact that my civil procedure professor sent us all multiple emails the week of the event reiterating that the only rule for the excursion was “no cameras” made us know to expect something great.
Another early sign that the night was going to be awesome: I’m pretty sure that my professors intentionally picked the bar that gave them the minimum probability of being recognized. The bar they chose was in a small town 20 minutes outside of campus, tucked behind a strip mall and inside a recreation center. When we walked in we literally doubled the number of people in there, and all of the bar patrons seemed shocked to see outsiders. It was pretty great.
The schedule called for our civil procedure professor to rap “Word Up” by Cameo. I think half of our group was unfamiliar with this song (travesty!). However, the idea that the man that taught us the wonder of such terms as “nonmutual offensive collateral estoppel” (don’t ask) was going to be rapping anything was pretty exciting. We had all assumed that he was going to get up in front of the mic and awkwardly try to rap it, and half the fun would be seeing him try. This is not what happened. He knew every lyric. I don’t think he even looked at the screen for the latter half of the song. My legal writing and her husband did a pretty adorable cover of “Summer Lovin’” from Grease, each grabbing a team of students to do the “Uh-well-uh-well-uh-well-uh-HUH”s. Also there is a very real chance that I ended up doing a duet version of “Walk This Way” with a friend of mine in which I insisted on doing the Steven Tyler chorus. This was unfortunate for all parties involved given that I’m tone def and my friend was recently elected president of the law school a capella group. Needless to say, if this item ever comes up for auction again, I suggest you bid high and bid fast. You’ll thank me later.
– Anit
