EDITORIAL
2 Obiter Dicta
Happy Halloween, Osgoode!
Because Candy
M
y r e l at ionsh i p w i t h Halloween
is complicated. I like to compare it to
eating half a pound of gummy bears in
one sitting, or attempting the cinnamon
challenge. They may seem like great ideas, but once
I start to follow through on them, I abruptly regret
my actions. Halloween should come together so much
better than it does. Prima facie, the combination of
candy, adorable children in costumes, and adrenaline-pumping scary movies seems like a nigh unbeatable combination. But when I spiral down the black
hole of eating my fifth Kit Kat of the hour, opening my door to super stoned sixteen year-olds holding pillowcases, and failing to sleep a full night since
spending an evening with Linda Blair, Halloween
slowly begins to surpass rush hour on the Downsview
bus as my archenemy.
And yet, people seem willing to forgive and forget,
year after year. I hesitate to attribute the deluge of
jack-o-lantern-themed Pinterest crafts and friends’
Instagrams of “baby’s first Halloween” (God, I’m so
old) to the sustained sugar high of many, many pumpkin spice lattes. No – there must be something more
at play. While I staunchly cling to the age old truth
that anyone who describes themselves as “really into
Halloween” cannot be a quality human, I’m tempted
to bracket my cynicism of all things orange and black
in aim of trying to get into the holiday spirit. But
we’re a witty bunch here at the Obiter, so this is no
regular Halloween article. Join me, Ozzies, as I catalogue, in true ghoulish fashion, the scariest and most
terrifying experiences a law student can encounter.
Hearing the phrase: “You have two minutes left in
this interview.”: How no one has raised a ballyhoo
about how disturbingly similar the OCI process is to
The Hunger Games, I’ll never know. It’s basically the
same dystopian, annual death match (we assemble
ourselves in single file, march out into the fray, and
fight until only the winner is left standing), right
down to the (largely arbitrary) reaping, without the
popcorn.
Closed-Book Exams: Or take-home exams, or essays,
or seminar presentations. How do professors ever
expect us to become competent lawyers if they force
us to adapt to new situations, like – gasp – writing an
exam without a summary-crutch? Everyone knows
the legal profession just consists of mechanistically
applying the same formula to situations which differ
in only the most menial details, thereby allowing us
to circumvent the need for an original thought to ever
tumble through our heads. The audacity!
Hearsay Rules: You are Alice, Professor Berger is the
Cheshire Cat. Down the rabbit hole you go.
A Sunday morning without brunch: No explanation needed. For more information, please see
Jurisfoodence on page 16.
Correspondingly, a post-exam evening without alcohol and mindless TV: I don’t even know what one of
those looks like.
Your first Tax Law lecture: Be honest, you only took
this class because you figured you would be able to do
your own taxes, without the help of your begrudging accountant friend or cruel social experiment
disguised as one of those diabolic computer programs meant to sort out your t axes for you. Yeah,
you haven’t taken math since tenth grade and you
couldn’t do long division if someone was holding a
gun to your head. But there are, like, calculators,
right? Yeah, good luck with that.
First family function after beginning law school: I’m
not sure which is scarier: all of my distant relatives
suddenly asking me for legal advice, or the prospect
of them following my fourth-glass-of-wine take on
holograph wills. Merry Christmas to all and to all a
barely coherent and definitely negligent estate planning session!
Buying your first (proper) suit: I don’t mean pairing
an ill-fitting H&M blazer with those pants in your
closet that may not be dress pants, but definitely
aren’t jeans either. It’s a fact universally acknowledged that your first proper suit will cost roughly the
same as a semester’s worth of textbooks. Where’s the
space on bursary applications to record expenses for
ridiculously overpriced business attire, designed to
make you look like the soulless paper pusher you’re
about to become for the low, low price of ~$70k, three
years of your life, and a not-so-small portion of your
sanity?
» see editorial, page 18
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a. Osgoode Hall Law School, 0014g
York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, on m3j 1p3
e. ObiterDicta@osgoode.yorku.ca
w. obiter-dicta.ca
t. @obiterdictaoz
“Words are chameleons, which reflect the
colour of their environment.”
learned hand
editorial board
editor-in-chief | Karolina Wisniewski
managing editor | Sam Michaels
layout editor | Heather Pringle
editorial staff
business managers | Alvin Qian,
Adam Cepler
communications manager | Angie Sheep
copy editor | Subban Jama
news editor | Mike Capitano
opinions editor | Carla Marti
arts & culture editor | Marie Park
sports editor | Evan Ivkovic
website editor | Asad Akhtar
staff writers
submitted to: obiterdicta@osgoode.yorku.ca
Kate Henley, Gleb Matushansky, Erin Garbett,
Hannah de Jong, Kenneth Cheak Kwan Lam,
Kendall Grant, Rob Hamilton
The Obiter Dicta is published biweekly
during the school year, and is printed by
Weller Publishing Co. Ltd.
l ayout staff
Lisa Johnson, Julián Gomez Biagi
contributors
Alison Williams, Sabreena Delhon, Scott
Franks, Katherine Spensieri,Michael Silver,
Lillian Cadeaux-Shaw
Submissions for the November 17 issue are
due at 5pm on November 8, and should be
Obiter Dicta is the official student newspaper
of Osgoode Hall Law School. The opinions
expressed in the articles contained herein are
not necessarily those of the Obiter staff. The
Obiter reserves the right to refuse any submission that is judged to be libelous or defamatory,
contains personal attacks, or is discriminatory
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