Last night was the annual Public Interest Project auction, an event to raise money to fund students' unpaid public interest work in the summer. I'd done PIP my 1L and 2L years, and last summer was paid through one of the grants.
As is typical, the auction has two main parts: a silent auction during the first two hours, where people bid on packages of donated items and gift certificates, and a live auction. The live auction includes bigger-ticket items like vacation home rentals (this year also included memorabilia from Boston Legal and Family Guy) as well as unique things donated by faculty. Sometimes it's an opportunity to have a particular dining experience with you, a faculty member, and some number of your friends; sometimes it's the opportunity for your 1L section to play basketball against the professors. This year one of the professors also donated an original painting: a banana with a smiley face, entitled "Despair."
This year they also had blackjack during the silent auction, with various faculty serving as dealers. Granted some had more experience than others… but because the chips could only be converted into raffle tickets it wasn't too stressful to walk some of the newbies through the ins and outs of the rules of 21…
The crowd overall seemed larger this year than I remember from others. It particularly seemed to have more alumni, but maybe that's because I could recognize more of them since many were last year's 3Ls. It was interesting to see how nicely they all cleaned up, now that they aren't haggard students anymore…
Oddly enough, given that I have no money, I probably spent one of the larger chunks of money at the auction: $1100. But in theory it's a good deal. Bar/Bri had donated several certificates for discounted courses. The way it worked out, the money still due Bar/Bri + the $1100 should amount to less than what I would have paid for the bar review course outright, by at least a tad. And in any case, even if it's just a very small tad at least PIP gets the money. That's 1/4 of a student's grant right there.
Posted 3/25.