Insides - Virginia Law Weekly

VIRGINIA
LAW
WEEKLY
Insides:
Changes to Honor...pg. 2
Hot Bench...pg. 3
Wednesday, 24 February 2016 The Newspaper of the University of Virginia School of Law Since 1948
THE GREAT SBA
DEBATE
Volume 68, Number 17
around north
grounds
Congrats to the
Lile Semifinal victors
Nick Carullo, Jack
Welch, Reedy Swanson, and Ashwin
Shandilya. ANG would have
joined Lile but ANG was busy
WITH an oral argument with
the liquor store cashier.
Thumbs
down
to Jeb! - now Jeb :( having to suspend
his campaign. ANG
will miss giving you a thumbs
down every week. Please clap.
#SorryMom
Thumbs up to the
106 year old dancing lady breakin’ it
down when meeting
Obama. ANG hopes to be that
limber at age 106.
Ryan Caira, ‘17
News Editor
Around 5:30 last Wednesday
afternoon, students began to filter
into the Caplin Pavilion to watch,
listen to, or broadcast their silkscreened support for the candidates
in the SBA debate preceding this
week’s election. The debate, moderated by the Law Weekly, was held
to give SBA presidential and vicepresidential candidates an opportunity to distinguish themselves on
the fine points of hot-button issues
like general qualifying experiences,
big-picture visions of respective
roles, and personal views of their
own strengths and weaknesses.
These questions invoked
the targeted interests of a
student-body
electorate
deeply concerned with
the high-stakes outcome
of an SBA regime change.
Candidates running for
other positions were given
the opportunity to speak;
but since no other position drew opposition, such
speeches were largely ceremonial.
First up was the Presidential debate. Running
for the position were Eli
Heller, Nathaniel Freeman,
and A.J. Collins. Freeman
was dressed down, though
as President of the J.B.
Moore Society, which had
hosted an international law symposium earlier that day, he had evidently been sporting a suit pretty
much all day till the debate began.
The other two were in full OGI attire, with Collins sporting an attractively lustrous and non- (or bi-)
partisan red-and-white-striped tie.
SBA Presidential Candidates
photo courtesy of David Markoff
The three candidates took a seat
at the table front-and-center of the
auditorium, microphones placed
at each setting. A blinking-light
timer (courtesy of Lile Moot Court)
had been placed at the audience’s
end of the table to alert the crowd
and the speaking candidate to his
remaining time. Law Weekly’s own
Alex Haden and Christina Albertson sat at a smaller table nearby,
which had been angled slightly
toward the candidates to create
some impression of genuine debate. Haden announced the rules
of the debate and admonished the
candidates not to voice support for
anyone besides themselves.
The candidates fielded softball
questions for about a half an hour.
Each, when called on, rose to emphasize his assertiveness, and
then stood diffidently in front of
the audience, drifting from place
to place with no apparent coor-
closing statements, and the debate
paused briefly for the benefit of the
audience.
During the break, some of those
running unopposed—a 2L senator,
the Treasurer, and the UJC rep—
availed themselves of this brief
silence to speak. One expressed
his disappointment in UVA Law’s
lack of interest in SBA involvement;
another defended the SBA for its
$17,000 surplus.
Next up, the vice-presidential
candidates. Running for VP were
Sami Al-Marzoog, Charis Redmond, and Erich Reimer. Reimer,
who had recently been featured on
Fox News for modeling his SBA VP run on
Trump’s campaign,
marched into the auditorium with a selfimportant
swagger
and a hat that read:
Make UVA Law Great
Again. Reimer had
the air of one telling
an intimately familiar
inside joke to a crowd
of people who were
very much not on the
inside. The candidates
took their seats at the
table. Reimer, who
had carried extra hats
with him, placed one
SBA Vice-Presidential Candidates on each side of his miphoto courtesy of David Markoff crophone. Haden, at
hinged on a Mafioso-like network the moderator’s table, was visibly
of campus-wide connections, from uncomfortable.
the Law School Foundation to the
With the one notable exception,
JAG school to Main Grounds. And the VP Debate possessed an earHeller ran on his ability to speak nestness that the Presidential devolubly about his own intimate fa- bate did not. Al-Marzoog, sharply
miliarity with the future needs of dressed in a full suit, touted his
►DEBATE page 4
the SBA. The candidates made their
dination between body language
and the points articulated in answer. Answers were steeped with
buzzwords and business speak—
“inclusivity,” “collaborative,” “integration,” “accountability,” and
phrases like “really unique” and
“path toward strengthening our
community.”
The language was something
like what you might expect to hear
at an admitted student’s weekend
or a Darden brainstorming session.
Collins was running on a platform
of Chick-fil-A, lightheartedness,
and an earnest commitment to diversity. Freeman’s self-promotion
Thumbs
down
to the 10-year-anniversary of Justice
Thomas not asking
questions during oral arguments. ANG has also gone 10
years without speaking in a
legal sense, which probably
explains why ANG still hasn’t
graduated.
Thumbs up to
National Margarita
Day. ANG is going to
celebrate by having a
margarita or eight. #TequilaMockingbird #tequilamakesmyclothesfalloff
Thumbs down to
the lawsuit about
Ted Cruz’s constitutional ability to run
for president. If people start
checking the birth countries of
famous people, ANG is gonna
need a fake passport.
Thumbs up to the
65 degree weather
on Saturday. ANG
hopes the 1Ls will be
able to remember that beautiful day as they spend journal
tryouts turning into carbon
copies of Gollum.
Thumbs up to Apple CEO Tim Cook.
ANG sure doesn’t
want the government looking at ANG’s iPhone
pictures after Das Klub.
Pour one out
for @KeshaRose.
Even Kanye would
feel sympathetic.
#FreeKesha
2
Colophon
Jaeyoon Park
Undergraduate Columnist
Ian Robertson
Undergraduate Columnist
This article has been revised and
expanded from a piece originally
written for the Cavalier Daily. It is
printed here in part, with the full
version online. Park and Robertson
are undergraduate students at the
University of Virginia.
This week, students are voting on the single sanction—the
policy of the UVA honor system to expel any student found
guilty of committing an honor
offense. Many arguments have
been raised on both sides, based
variously on tradition, on ideals, on recent policy changes,
and so on. We’d like to cast light
on a different issue that, in our
view, recommends moving to a
multiple-sanction honor system.
Specifically, we’d like to discuss
the effects of a single-sanction
honor system on due process.
Our claim, which we’ll try to lay
out in the course of this article,
is that the honor system falls
short of its duty to provide students with due process because
it is, by design, unconstitutionally vague.
Before we get into the argument itself, let us admit up front:
we are not experts; we are hardly even amateurs. Rather, we are
students who, over the course of
our undergraduate years, have
represented students within the
honor system and who have noticed that something is wrong.
Here is, simply, our best guess
at a diagnosis.
[…]
VIRGINIA LAW WEEKLY
Wednesday, 24 February 2016
Does the Honor System Provide Due Process?
ness.”4 The Court explains that
no law can be “so vague that
men of common intelligence
must necessarily guess at its
meaning and differ as to its application.”5
Why does this matter? First,
consider the effects on prevention. Vague laws fail to let
The honor system is ineffective in a way that violates due
process.
In a 2012 report, the Policies
and Procedures Subcommittee
of the honor system wrote that
“the functionality of the Honor
System is broken and demands
reform before it undermines its
core values.”1 It’s
our view that the
focus of such reform needs to be
the
sanctioning
policy of the honor
system. To be sure,
even supporters of
the single sanction
acknowledge that
it exacerbates certain problems, such
as low reporting
rates and inconsistent verdicts. Still,
they defend the
single sanction by
saying something
like: ‘The absolute
ideal expressed by
the single sanction
outweighs its practical drawbacks.’
We think that the
vagueness of a
single-sanction system fails to
provide our community with
a fundamental guarantee: due
process of law. This, we contend, is a drawback that no ideal
can outweigh.
The U.S. Supreme Court has
consistently struck down as
unconstitutional laws that do
not meet certain standards of
“definiteness.”2 These decisions
— see, e.g., Papachristou v. City of
Jacksonville3 — declare the laws
in question “void for vague-
people know what is illegal. According to the Supreme Court,
the Constitution requires that
laws inform people of “what
the State commands or forbids”6
and that laws “give fair notice
of the offending conduct.”7 This
is, the Court has said, a “first essential of due process of law.”8
Now consider the effects on
adjudication. The Court has further claimed that vague laws
produce “arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”9 If judges
Virginia
Law Weekly
COLOPHON
COLOPHON
Christina Albertson ‘16
Editor-in-Chief
Alex Haden ‘17
Executive Editor
and jurors lack clear standards
for determining guilt, then it is
impossible for them to render
fair and consistent verdicts.
For this reason, the Court has
always held that laws cannot
simply “leave it to the courts
to... say who could be rightfully
detained, and who should be set
at large.”10 In other
words, due process
cannot be guaranteed by the whims
of jurors alone.
It’s long been
a tradition of our
honor system that
it remains distinct
from the American
legal system. This
has many salutary
effects. Certainly,
for example, it
would be horrible to see “Law &
Order”-style hectoring and “lawyering” during an
honor trial. But any
system that has the
possibility of enforcing a sanction
like expulsion has a
basic duty to ensure
due process. As the UVA Board
of Visitors writes, the honor
system must provide “notice
and opportunity to accused students to be heard in accordance
with due process of law.”11 The
federal courts have agreed: see
the opinion of the U.S. District
Court in Cobb v. Rector, Visitors,
University of Virginia.12
The Honor Committee has
been sued in the past for allegedly failing to provide due
process. In each of these past
faculty quotes
M. Gilbert: ANG said it best
[re honoring Justice Scalia].
J.G. Hylton: I’m proud to
say that I wasn’t born in West
Virginia. I was born about six
miles from the state line and
those six miles make all the difference.
P. Verdier: Please, Chinese
spies, don’t shoot me!
Ashley Angelotti ‘17
Production Editor
Columns Editor
Caroline Catchpole ‘17
cases, the Committee has been
successfully defended. Consider the case of Henson v. Honor
Committee of U.Va., The Rector
and Visitors of U.Va.,13 which
some have cited as evidence of
the constitutional adequacy of
the honor system’s provision of
due process. The U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
explained that “the procedural
protections afforded [the plaintiff] were sufficient under the
fourteenth amendment’s due
process clause.”14
But, so far as we know, cases
like Henson weren’t based on the
argument we’re making: that
the honor system fails to ensure
due process because it is, by design, unconstitutionally vague.
More specifically, the honor
system fails to provide students
with fair notice of what constitutes an honor offense, and it
produces unpredictable and inconsistent verdicts. In Henson,
although the plaintiff alleged
the “facial inadequacy of the
Honor System procedures,”15
such inadequacy was only evaluated on the following grounds.
In the words of the Fourth Circuit, “Henson’s principal contention on appeal is that the
Honor Code procedures violate
due process in two critical respects: (1) the student is denied
the right to have experienced legal counsel conduct his defense
and cross-examine witnesses;
and (2) the student is denied
the right to have the hearing
subject to the traditional rules
of evidence.”16 The question of
vagueness was neither raised by
the plaintiff nor reached by the
►HONOR page 3
J. Mahoney: Thanks for the
landscaping, Anonymous Santa.
J. Setear: Someone look up
where we can find carbolic acid
in bulk - no wait, in small quantities.
A. Johnson: He could kill
her. That would defeat her
marital right.
News Editor
Ryan Caira ‘17
Social Media Editor
Dana Wallace ‘16
Managing Editor
David Markoff ‘17
Editorial Cartoonist
Carly Coleman ‘17
Published weekly on Wednesday except during holiday and examination periods and serving the Law School community at the University of Virginia,
the Virginia Law Weekly (ISSN 0042-661X) is not an official publication of the University and does not necessarily express the views of the University. Any
article appearing herein may be reproduced provided that credit is given to both the Virginia Law Weekly and the author of the article. Advanced written
permission of the Virginia Law Weekly is also required for reproduction of any cartoon or illustration.
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EDITORIAL POLICY: The Virginia Law Weekly publishes letters and columns of interest to the Law School and the legal community at large. Views expressed in such submissions are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Law Weekly or the Editorial Board. Letters from organizations must bear
the name, signature, and title of the person authorizing the submission. All letters and columns must either be submitted in hardcopy bearing a handwritten
signature along with an electronic version, or be mailed from the author’s e-mail account. Submissions must be received by 5 p.m. the Friday before publication and must be in accordance with the submission guidelines. Letters over 500 words and columns over 1000 words may not be accepted. The Editorial Board
reserves the right to edit all submissions for length, grammar, and clarity. Although every effort is made to publish all materials meeting our guidelines, we
regret that not all submissions received can be published.
See News?
Hear a good story?
email: [email protected]
Wednesday, 24 February 2016
►HONOR
continued from page 2
court.
Up to now, we haven’t even
mentioned one of the major
grievances that students have
long had with our honor system: that its effects are discriminatory. In 2014, the Cavalier Daily reported that 62.5 percent of
honor reports were filed against
minority students, a time when
only 28.3 percent of the undergraduate population identified
as a minority.17 This is nothing
new. In 1988, the Cavalier Daily reported that “29.7 percent
of honor accusations are made
against black students, a number which is disproportionately
higher than the approximately
eight percent blacks attending the University.”18 On any
possible interpretation, these
statistics are deeply concerning. Viewing the honor system
in light of the “void for vagueness” considerations may suggest that it’s no coincidence. In
fact, the 2014 article we cited
above states further, “in contrast
to Honor’s perceived bias, the
UJC’s reporting rates are more
comparable to the student population.” According to the article, “UJC Chair David Ensey…
attributes this to the [UJC’s]
more objective standards for reporting offenses.”19
[…]
Students can vote on the sanctioning policy of the honor system this week at uvavote.com.
--1
h t t p : / / w w w. v i r g i n i a .
VIRGINIA LAW WEEKLY
edu/honor/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Back-to-BasicsProposal_11-13.pdf
2
Winters v. New York, 333
U.S. 507, 534 (1948).
3
Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 (1972).
4
Id.
5
Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385
(1926).
6
Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306
U.S. 451, 453 (1939).
7
Papachristou, 405 U.S. 156,
162.
8
Connally, 269 U.S. 385, 391.
9
Papachristou, 405 U.S. 156,
170.
10
United States v. Reese, 92
U.S. 214, 221 (1875).
11
h t t p : / / w w w. v i r g i n i a .
edu/honor/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/BOV-delegation.pdf
12
Cobb v. Rector, Visitors,
University of Virginia, 69 F.
Supp. 2d 815, 826 (W.D. Va.
1999).
13
Henson v. Honor Committee of U.Va., The Rector and
Visitors of U.Va., 719 F. 2d 69, 73
(4th Cir. 1983).
14
Id.
15
Id.
16
Id.
17
http://www.cavalierdaily.
com/article/2014/03/underrepresented-and-over-reported
18
http://uvamagazine.org/
articles/the_evolution_of_honor
19
http://www.cavalierdaily.
com/article/2014/03/underrepresented-and-over-reported
[email protected]
[email protected]
HOT BENCH
5. Are you a good dancer?
No. Sadly, I have negative
rhythm. Please don’t tell Beyoncé.
6. Do you sing in the shower?
Yes. My go-tos are “I Wanna
Dance with Somebody” by Whitney Houston, “Not A Bad Thing”
by Justin Timberlake, “Not Over
You” by Gavin DeGraw, and
“Blank Space” by Taylor Swift.
Eric Hall
1. Have you ever had a nickname? What?
AC, Aust, Austin Powers,
Brown Bear, Dark Shark, etc.
2. If you could choose one
person to be abducted by aliens,
who would it be?
Donald Trump, but he may
have already been abducted by
aliens. So, alternatively, Marco
Rubio.
3. What’s the last non-school
book that you’ve read?
Red Rising by Pierce Brown,
but I don’t read many real books
any more. Since I started law
school, I’ve become an unofficial
member of the Derek Zoolander
School for Kids Who Can’t Read
Good.
4. Cats or Dogs?
Dogs. Cats are weird and
mean and go to the bathroom in
the house.
7. What’s the best present you
ever received?
Over winter break I went to
Australia to sightsee/watch the
Australian Open. I’m a huge tennis fan and I got to see Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic play
live. Best vacation ever.
8. Do you believe the library
should install a water feature?
Yeah! It’d definitely be therapeutic and might drown out the
undergrads.
9. If you could ask your future self one question what
would it be?
What’s it like to be so handsome, wealthy, successful, and
admired? Kidding. Sort of.
10. What’s your coolest hidden talent?
I don’t know that it’s cool, but
I can roll my tongue 360 degrees
around.
11. If you could make one
law that everyone had to follow,
what would it be?
I would create an asshole-free
zone around the people and
places I loved and mandate a
four-day workweek.
Diversity Week
3
12. What’s the longest you’ve
gone without sleep?
48 hours right before my college thesis was due. I wouldn’t
recommend doing that.
13. Surfboard.
Surfboardt.
14. What did you have for
breakfast this morning?
Apple Jacks and an English
muffin.
15.
Backstreet Boys or
*NSYNC?
Backstreet Boys. “I Want It
That Way” is an anthem.
16. If you could live anywhere, where would that be?
Somewhere in California - either in Malibu or San Francisco
17. Where did you grow
up?
Washington, DC- I grew up in
Tenleytown but my parents live
in Rockville, MD now.
18. What’s the best sandwich you’ve ever had?
Grilled chicken with bacon,
avocado, caramelized onions,
mushrooms, sliced tomato, and
Swiss cheese with honey mustard and chipotle mayo on sourdough. It’s the stuff dreams are
made of.
19. If you were a superhero
what would your superpower
be?
Being able to fly would be really cool.
20. How old are you in
dog years?
196.
Honor Sits Squarely Within the Law
Michelle Butler ‘17
Guest Columnist
Austin Sim ‘17
Guest Columnist
Before addressing the authors’
non-legal concerns with the
single sanction, we would like
to dispel some egregious misinformation: the Honor is not
above the law article is incorrect
as a matter of law. The authors
have contended that the Honor
System, as it currently functions,
“violates due process.”
First, it is important to note
that both the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia and the United
States Court of Appeals for the
Fourth Circuit (an appellate
court one step below the Supreme Court for federal cases
arising in Maryland, Virginia,
West Virginia, North Carolina,
and South Carolina), have already disagreed with this assertion in a case directly challenging the sufficiency of due
process protections for students
accused of an honor offense. See
Henson v. The Honor Committee of
U. Va., 719 F.2d 69, 73 (4th Cir.
1983). Now to address each of
the authors’ arguments in turn.
1. The single sanction makes
the definition of an honor offense unclear.
As trained support officers in
Honor, the authors know better
than anyone that the procedural
separation of the application of
the criteria of an honor offense
from the imposition of a sanction
renders the above contention
illogical. First, the definitions of
Knowledge and Significance, as
set forth in the Bylaws and as the value collaboration on certain
authors have so faithfully recited assignments, while others have
at hearings, are clear. It is the more strict requirements.
All of these requirements are
variances in the panelists’ applications of the criteria of Knowl- either set forth explicitly in a
edge and Significance with syllabus or readily obtainable
from the teaching staff. Finding
which the authors take issue.
However, because jurors are a student not guilty of cheating
prohibited from considering the on the criterion of Significance
sanction in the process of deter- because he or she collaborated
mining the guilt of the student, with classmates in a class that
the application of the definition- allowed for some collaboration
al components of an honor of- is a proper application of that
fense is unaffected by the single standard and should not be dissanction. A student panel defini- missed as “leniency.”
tively determines whether a spe2. The unclear definition of an
cific act under specific circumstances is considered an honor honor offense makes the honor
offense by applying the clear system ineffective.
Taking a step back from
definitional criteria to the case
in question and without consid- the hyperbole of complete
ering the sanction. It is unclear “ineffective[ness],” these points
how the existence of the single are better addressed in other
sanction renders the definition pieces and fora. These other articles also address the authors’
of an honor offense unclear.
Second, the criteria of Knowl- point 4. See, e.g., Cavalier Daily
edge and Significance are inten- Editorial Board, Vote for option
tionally cast as standards rather 2; Rick Yoder, Vote for option 1;
Houston,
we have
a problem.
Faith
Lyons, Preserve the single
than rules. The existence
of flexible standards, as opposed to sanction; Russell Bogue, The sincategorical rules, allows mem- gle sanction holds us to a higher
bers in both our system and the standard.
American justice system to prop3. The honor system is ineferly apply text to various situafective in a way that violates
tions.
As the Supreme Court has due process.
Simply put, not all vagueness
“frequently emphasized[,] the
very nature of due process ne- is unconstitutionally vague.
gates any concept of inflexible If it were, our entire criminal
procedures universally appli- justice and torts systems would
cable to every imaginable situa- be as well. The entirety of
tion.” Bd. of Curators of Univ. of criminal law is dependent on a
Mo. v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78, 86 subjective determination of mens
(1978) (quoting Cafeteria Work- rea (“guilty mind”), which uses
ers v. McElroy, 367 U.S. 886, 895 standards identical to our crite(1961)). Different practices are rion of Knowledge. Much like
acceptable in different settings; in the Honor System, a crimisome classes across Grounds nal act must be committed with
some sort of mens rea (ignoring a
small percentage of strict liability offenses), ranging from intent
to negligence (what a reasonable
person should have known to be a
crime – this should sound very
familiar).
Additionally, the vast majority of civil wrongs adjudicated
by our torts system are also calibrated to the same reasonable
person standard. Although no
one is quite sure what a reasonable person is in the abstract,
any vagueness arising from the
application of this standard is
both identical to that of the Honor System and definitively constitutional.
Curiously, the authors attempt
to use the unconstitutional
vagueness doctrine (which they
seem to misunderstand) as a
method of attacking the constitutionality of our single sanction
system, when a very clear body
of case law exists rejecting their
main contention. Why cite cases
referencing gang-related antiloitering procedures in Chicago
and New Jersey when we have
cases dealing directly with the
constitutionality of disciplinary
procedures and even the UVA
Honor System itself?
In this arena, the Supreme
Court has stated that due process
is satisfied when “the student
[is] given oral or written notice
of the charges against him, and
if he denies them, an explanation
of the evidence the authorities
have and an opportunity to present his side of the story.” Goss v.
Lopez, 419 U.S. 565, 581 (1975).
While this case dealt specifically with a 10 day suspension in
Ohio public schools, these mini-
mum requirements were also applied to university disciplinary
proceedings in general. See Dixon
v. Ala. St. Bd. of Ed., 294 F.2d 150,
158 (5th Cir. 1961). This case is a
foundational student disciplinary procedure case, outlining
more specific requirements, including (1) notice with a “statement of the specific charges and
grounds which, if proven, would
justify expulsion” and (2) a hearing for both sides to present their
cases “in considerable detail,”
but “a full-dress judicial hearing,
with the right to cross-examine
witnesses” is not required.” Id. at
158-59.
Following Supreme Court
precedent, the Fourth Circuit
has explicitly held that the
procedures of the UVA Honor
System do not violate due
process, affirming that “ the University’s Honor System provides
the accused student with an impressive array of procedural protections.” Henson, 719 F.2d at 73.
In support of this holding, the
court acknowledged the need
for flexibility seen in Horowitz,
as well as the fact that “a school
is an academic institution, not
a courtroom or administrative
hearing room.” Id. at 74 (quoting Horowitz, 435 U.S. at 88).
Thus, our system has been appropriately founded on the fundamental elements of due process required by the Fourteenth
Amendment and Supreme Court
case law, in addition to passing
the Fourth Circuit’s scrutiny
with ease.
[email protected]
[email protected]
4
The Back Page
VIRGINIA LAW WEEKLY
Sonic Monograms
Oliver Newman ‘16
Guest Columnist
WHAT MIKE HAWK DIDN’T
KNOW was that what started
as a joke in the early morning
hours of a dying club in Philadelphia, the Distant Cousin,
would quickly spiral into one of
the most influential Post-Hard
Rock/ Neo-Punk / Retro-Goth
bands on the scene today. Ladies and Gentlemen: FUCKING
BANDITS.
With songs like “Inside Justin’s Mom,” and “She’s Flexible
From the Waist Up,” a ballad
written for Hawk’s paraplegic
former girlfriend, the band’s
sudden rise came as a shock
to those within the music industry. Current artists such as
Pretty Boy Fog, Song-Writing
Monkey, Plylar, and the Resinator, expressed their disdain for
the group in strongly worded
tweets, and have since called
for their fans to boycott the album’s upcoming release.
Executives and label-makers
have similarly balked at the
idea of a band qua band. Former front man for Lickin’ Lemons and current head of N-ME
Productions commented, “Nobody listens to music anymore.
Song writing is a dying art. You
have to be crazy to try and sell
yourself as a serious artist these
days.”
But statements like these are
nothing new to FUCKING BANDITS. The clatter surrounding
the release of the band’s first
album, Drowning in Symphony,
prompted Pale Mary to quip,
“It’s about as anticipated as this
month’s mammogram.”
Despite these misgivings,
new fans of the band seem to
pop up daily, and aging anti-heroes have professed admiration
for the trio nearly without qualification. For this article I placed
a collect call to Bob Dylan, who
(after accepting charges) was
heard to say the new album
was, “pretty bitchin’.”
High-octane
a-temporal
beats, combined with edgy lyrics and drummer Max Amilyan’s ribald stage presence, have
contributed to the band’s mainstream success. “We’re just so
grateful, you know,” said Max,
in an interview last week. “To
be able to make music our way.
To be true to ourselves, and our
process. It’s really just a dream
come true.”
When asked about the name
of their upcoming album, lead
singer and part-time political
activist, Danny Fantastic, stated, “We see ourselves as a meta-band. We make meta-music.
We’re not about the fame, the
fortune, or the groupies. This
album was merely an expression of our artistic intent: we
simply wanted to scratch our
tracks into your fucking earholes.”
Whatever can be said about
this band, good or bad, fair or
unwarranted, one thing is for
sure: FUCKING BANDITS’
new album, Sonic Monograms,
is fierce, bold, unfiltered, and
coming to a store near you.
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►DEBATE
continued from page 1
Wednesday, 24 February 2016
Lile Semi-Finals Photos
own familiarity with the SBA and
radiated trustworthiness. Redmond, too, an SBA outsider, presented her own brand of intimacy
and trustworthiness, and seemed
at least as compelling a candidate
as Al-Marzoog.
But perhaps the most memorable part of the debate, for better
or worse, was Reimer. Reimer, who
had, à la Trump, informed the Law
Weekly before the event that he
would protest the event vociferously from just outside the auditorium unless we disgorged our
profits for the benefit of rebuilding
the SBA outline bank,1 tapped into
the issues he believed closest to the
hearts of the student-body electorate. His platform would be best expressed by way of quotation: “We
don’t win anymore. The alcohol
policy is a disgrace; I would replace
it with something terrific. The Law
School border policy is a disgrace.
I have excellent relationship with
everyone, and I am totally selffunded.”
What exactly we have been losing is unclear, and the alcohol policy a bit of a dead horse. But it’s hard
to disagree—who wouldn’t want
to make UVA Law great again?
--1
The Law Weekly does not in any
way profit from the SBA debate.
[email protected]
The Docket
SUDOKU
Answers