Auction Raises $14K for Public Interest Summer Work
April 3, 2008 — The singing was seldom on key. Students trounced their professors in a trivia contest. And an associate dean and an esteemed faculty member made the ultimate sacrifice: offering up their faces as targets for cream pies.
Seldom have so many intelligent people humiliated themselves for a good cause.
The First Annual Slice of Justice Public-Interest Experience Auction was a tremendous success, raising nearly $14,000 for students who take unpaid summer jobs helping indigent area residents.
The April 3 event was organized by the Public Interest Experience Grants Board, a group of students who work with Associate Dean Susan Brooks and Public-Interest Programs Associate Director Karen Pearlman Raab to distribute stipends to students who work for free during the summer.
Students, faculty, staff and local businesses donated goods and services ranging from a home-cooked Indian dinner to Czech lessons to aquatic personal training. The donations were snapped up by professors, students and staff during silent and public auctions.
Entertainment was plentiful, if inconsistent in quality, as students and professors too prudent to give up their scholarly pursuits took turns at the karaoke microphone.
Professors David Cohen and Kevin Oates turned in a spirited if unruly version of “Summer Lovin’,” singing backup for 1L Haley Conard, a professionally trained opera singer.
Cohen, who served on a faculty team that got trounced by a panel of students in a trivia contest, took the loss in stride.
“ It just goes to the talent level in the student body,” Cohen said.
The event culminated with a pie-toss aimed at the faces of Associate Dean Dan Filler and Professor Barry Furrow. preliminary contest to determine which of the two scholars would get the whipped-cream facial ended in a draw. But in the brisk bidding to purchase the privilege of throwing the pies, Dean Filler commanded $200, while the price on Professor Furrow’s face tallied $170.
Tracy Tripp, a 1L who joined four classmates in singing an unholy rendition of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” took a philosophical view of her experience and the whole event.
“I’ve been in worse positions,” she said. “That was a great team. Our hearts were in it.”
More News »