During the spring semester of my first year of law school there was an election for the Duke Bar Association (DBA). The DBA is the student government of the law school, and like all student governments everywhere, it is an ineffectual, worthless organization filled with small-minded, sanctimonious, self-important twits.

During one election I submitted a bunch of fake candidate statements for my friends. They were supposed to e silly, non-sensical, and funny. Usually the DBA posts the candidate statements, along with a picture of the candidate, on a bulletin board in the middle of the law school so everyone can read about the candidates before they vote. I submitted the fake statements because I wanted to see these ridiculous things I wrote posted along with the pictures of my friends.

Well, little did I realize what would happen. The DBA lost its collective shit. The person in charge of the election, David Dixon, went nuts. How nuts? Read the story in the Duke Law newspaper:

__________________________________________________________
Practical joker blows up chances at election
By Barbara Goffman
The gag was on a practical joker last week, who was barred from running in the DBA election because of a prank he pulled.

DBA Vice President Dave Dixon blocked 1L Tucker Max from running in Thursday's election after Max impersonated four 1Ls. Max had entered the election himself, seeking to be a representative to the Graduate and Professional Student Council (GPSC). Max also had submitted fake statements of intent to run in the election, as well as facetious platforms, under the names of four friends.

"I thought it was funny," Max said Tuesday night of the stunt. "This process begs for this sort of thing."

But Dixon, who organized the election, was not amused.

"I agree at some level that they were funny," Dixon said. "People have submitted flippant statements before. But submitting statements in someone else's name is what I have a problem with."

DBA President Andrew Flake agreed, saying that Max's action "mocks the whole electoral process."

Dixon discovered the prank accidentally. He sent out emails to all the students who had entered the election, reminding them of the deadline for submitting their platforms. Two people wrote back, saying they had never thrown their names in the ring. About the same time, other students told Dixon about the stunt and Max's role in it.

Dixon confronted Max, who admitted his actions. Dixon then disqualified Max from running in the election and reported the incident to Susan Sockwell, associate dean for student affairs.

"I felt I was required to report it because it was close enough to an honor code violation," Dixon said.

Other DBA board members agreed. During a discussion of the incident at Tuesday's weekly DBA meeting, 3L Representative Kim Lerman remarked that Max's actions have "got to be an honor code violation."

Yet they aren't, Sockwell said. The code only covers specific listed offenses, such as plagiarism or use of unauthorized materials on an exam.

"I do not see that his submissions of fake, practical-joke election statements is a violation of one of the listed offenses in our honor code," Sockwell said Wednesday. "I told Tucker that I think it is misconduct but not an honor code violation, and he will not be prosecuted under the honor code."

Max is not necessarily off the hook, however. The preamble to the honor code allows the administration or faculty to separately address all other types of student misconduct, Sockwell said.

"There are other avenues to deal with misconduct. I'm still considering that. I don't know what I'm going to do," she said.

Max, meanwhile, had challenged his election disqualification. "My Statement of Intent was submitted in accordance with every rule that I could find," Max wrote in an email to Dixon on Feb. 24. "I submitted it with the full intention of running, and...I expect to be given the same considerations as every other person who ran."

Dixon maintained his action was permissible. The DBA Constitution says that the vice president may promulgate reasonable election rules and regulations, Dixon pointed out. The DBA board backed Dixon unanimously in a vote of confidence Tuesday.

After learning that his bid was rejected, Max said this whole incident had become "comical."
"I wouldn't have done this to someone I thought would have a remote chance of being offended," Max said. "I honestly figured someone would read these [platforms] and recognize immediately that they were fake. The whole thing should have taken five minutes at the most."

But Dixon ended up spending far more time on this issue. Between investigating the fake nominations, rewriting the ballots, and discussing the problem with Sockwell and the DBA board, Dixon said he wasted about 10 hours.

"I thought it was possibly defamatory to have these statements attributed to these people," Dixon said. "At the beginning, I had no idea if these were people [whom Max] hated."
__________________________________________________________

After reading that article, you must still have obvious questions that the mental midget who wrote the article didn't address. Like "what the fuck did the statements say?" Well read them:

Tucker Max:
My name is Tucker Max and I am applying for a position on the Graduate and Professional Student Council.

If elected, I promise to go to the Graduate and Professional Student Council meetings very drunk and demand to vote on things not on the agenda. Then I will take my shirt off so everyone can look at my rippling muscles. And possibly even my pants, but only if I have on boxer-briefs under them.

If I am still not getting my way, I will drag a dead, rotting deer carcass into the meeting, bellowing, "I AM NOW YOUR KING!! FLEE BEFORE MY RATH!!" I then I will unleash my thundering horde upon the dissenters, until all my enemies are driven before me and crushed under my Cole-Haan loafers.

Once I gain control of the Graduate and Professional Student Council, I will declare myself ruler for life. My first decree will be that all Grad student basketball tickets go to Law Students and hot girls who like me. I will then appoint someone Distributor of The Tickets, who will oversee the distribution of the tickets and the seating arrangements. That person could be you if you vote for me.

Then I will annex the University and its land, and declare a free state. And open a liquor store, with real cheap prices.

Respectfully submitted,
Tucker Max

Hate:
I am Hate. I WILL be your next Class Representative.

Why am I qualified? The obvious reason is because I said so. My other skills include: pointing out the obvious things that everyone misses, darts, ruling over committee meetings with an iron fist, and critiquing the obvious flaws in poorly made movies.

Why should you vote for me? Do you enjoy your teeth?

My motto is simple: "Just because I don't like you, doesn't mean that you can't vote for me."
Hate, Class of 2001

GoldenBoy:
My name is Golden Boy, and I would like to be your Library Committee Representative.

I feel that I am qualified for this position because I am very well read, I like libraries, and most importantly I am smarter than you are. With my superior intellect, I feel that I could do something for the library committee that has never been done before. What that is, I am not sure, but that doesn't change the fact that I am very smart, which you would know if you have ever had a class with me.

If elected, my first action will be to look down on you from my perch of enlightenment. My second action will be to sneer at you, as you look up at me from your little hovels of ignorance. My third action will be to talk as much as possible in all my classes.
Sincerely,
Golden Boy-The People's Candidate
Class of 2001

El Bingeroso:
My name is El Bingeroso. I am running for Faculty Appointments Committee Representative. My platform can be summarized by a silly little ballad I wrote during Criminal Law:

I am pretty, oh so pretty!
Everybody, oh everybody,
Please come look at me!
I am pretty, oh so pretty!
I want to appoint all the Faculty!
If I win, I'll sing this song in front of everyone.

Your Friend,
El Bingeroso, Class of 2001

Credit:
My name is Credit, and I am running for the Appeals Board.

I think I would make a good candidate because I am very appealing, hey! Also, I would add spice to the meetings by saying things like, "Lets'a go!" and "Who here ordered dis here pizza," even if there ain't no pizzas around.

Doin' it for da kids,
Credit

JoJo
My name is JoJo, and I would like to be your DBA Class Representative. You might have seen me around, I'm that black guy. The one with that thing on his face.

If I was like everyone else, I would promise you a bunch of ridiculous crap that I couldn't deliver on. But I'm not going to. Why? Because I am cooler than Shaft. I am more super than SuperFly. I AM THE BLACK CEASAR!

To me this election is about diversity, and it doesn't get more diverse than me. I am African, African-American, American, and Native American. And don't forget that I'm cool as Miles Davis.
I will make you one promise if you elect me. I will coolify this Law School. I'll show all the silly Bitterman look-a-likes how to dress, act and just be an overall pimp. And I won't sell out in the process, like Damon Wayans.

I also want to bring some life to the DBA. If elected, I will grow an Angela Davis looking afro. Then, I will free the law school from 400 years of oppression. Then I will change my name to Mandingo Dele.

Keepin' it real,
JoJo, Esquire To Be
Class of 2001

So after the DBA decided to fuck with the me and not allow any of the candidates to run and didn't put the candidates statements up on the board, did I stand by and do nothing? Well, yeah, pretty much. Honestly, I thought the whole thing was too absurd to deserve my time, even though my time is completely worthless. I did write a response though:

The response:
Keeping with the "any press is good press" maxim, I have written a response to the article in the last Duke Law Reporter about my role in the recent election fiasco. In case you have forgotten the whole election fiasco over break (as you should have), I'll refresh your memory. I wrote five Statements of Intent to run in the recent DBA election, four of which were for people not named "Tucker Max." The statements themselves were (admittedly) submitted as jokes, were totally inoffensive, and were in the names of four of my close friends, none of which are at all upset at me for any of this.

I'd like to begin by correcting some glaring errors in the article. First of all, David Dixon NEVER "confronted me." I still have no idea what this guy looks like. I would make guesses, but I won't because they'd probably all be libelous.

Second, I was not really "denied an opportunity to run." All the Statements, including my own, were submitted as jokes. I initially had no intention of running, and neither did anyone else. In reality, I just wanted to see these absurd Statements on a posterboard with my friends pictures next to them. Once I realized that I was running for an uncontested spot, and Dixon asked me if I really wanted to run, I told Dixon (in an email) that I would fill the position. This was obviously before he had his fit of indignant rage, and decided to disqualify me and my friends.

Enough with the clarifications, on with the rant. My favorite part of the article was where Andrew Flake said that I made a mockery of the "whole election process." Is he kidding? That's like saying that Jimmy Swaggert made a mockery of Televangelism. As if the DBA was this bastion of respectability and icon of professionalism until I came along and ruined everything. Insolent Tucker Max has forever sullied the lustrous reputation of the DBA. How will the law school ever recover? Who will govern us? Who will lead?

A delicious irony in this absurd comedy is the fact that of the three people who elected to stay in the race after the Statements were discovered as jokes, two of us were running for UNCONTESTED SPOTS. This means that we were disqualified for positions that no one else wanted. Apparently the DBA would rather have the spots unfilled than have someone with a sense of humor occupy them.

One of my favorite acts in this little drama was an email that David Dixon was kind enough to send me, in which he urged me to "engage in some serious thought about the fact that you are in a professional school, not a junior high school," and went on to hope that "this experience in law school will help redirect your paths toward the standard of professional conduct that absolutely will be required of you in your chosen vocation."

Thanks Dave! Boy, if that little bit of sagely wisdom didn't turn my life around. I'll start down this path by writing some tax legislation, maybe that'll make me professional! Or even better yet, I'll become a humorless automaton and rigidly enforce meaningless, bureaucratic rules!

I am having trouble figuring out why this whole thing upset people. The statements were not offensive, and the people whose names they were in found them funny. What does it say when David is more upset than the people whose names were used without consent? If I had written something like, "If elected, I promise to kill all the [insert favorite racial/ethnic group]," then the indignant lather that David and his little henchpeople got worked up into would be rightly justifiable. But not only were the statements not at all offensive to anyone, but the people that they were about thought that they were funny.

I also can't figure out why the actual statements of intent themselves were never printed. My guess is that either the newspaper didn't have a copy of them (coincidentally, they never asked me for copies), or the DBA didn't want them printed, because then those of us free of major head injury would realize how ridiculous this whole situation has become.

Some other things I was surprised that didn't make it into the Duke Law Reporter article: a more in-depth examination of David Dixon's basically unchecked power over the DBA elections, how David Dixon threatened (never to my face, of course) my law school career, how incredibly funny the actual statements were, and why none of the quotes from the interviews of those the Statements were about made it into the article.

The lesson to be learned from this whole fiasco is...don't go to law school. Well, not really. The real lesson is probably something about restraint and maturity, but I never learn those lessons.

The really ironic thing is that the editor of the Duke Law Reporter, Alyssa Rubensdorf, wouldn't print my response. Why? SHE THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE LIBELOUS! I swear to god she said that. What a flaming moron. In college I had the mostly widely read column in the history of my school, I was a section editor of that paper, which had a circulation of over 11,000, I've been published in real magazines and journals, and written my own books, and this nitwit thinks she knows better than me what can and can't be printed? Whatever. That is why she is a lawyer, and I am world famous.

Posted by at 11:28 PM

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