By Kirsten Anderberg Copyright 2003

I went to law school as revenge. I was a street performer, endlessly hassled by cops. Before that I was a homeless teenager, terrorized by police. I went to LAW SCHOOL AS REVENGE. I thought, “What would be “The Man’s” worst nightmare?” Then decided the answer was, “Street performer/attorneys!” The straw that broke my back, and made me decide to actually attend school, with vehemence and purpose, was my receiving 8 obscenity tickets for my feminist comedy/street performance. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) defended me, and I began to realize I needed to become an attorney to protect access to free speech. But the road to school as revenge was not easy.

I was a homeless teen without a high school diploma. I had been abandoned by my family, working minimum wage jobs just to survive. I went to the nearest community college and asked if I could get a law degree there. The community college counselors, administrators, and teachers, literally laughed at me. They tried to route me into low-status, low-paying, vocational training, to be a legal assistant, a legal secretary, a paralegal, instead. They insisted I could only afford an Associates of Arts or Sciences degree (A.A./A.S.), which is a two-year vocational training certificate, basically. I kept insisting I was smart, and I wanted to be an attorney, not an assistant. Administrators actually said that for me to ask for counseling on how to go to law school, was like asking for guidance on how to be a professional football player. I insisted all I wanted was information on how to transfer to an undergraduate program at a university, and how to go to law school. A low-income mother/street performer, without family or spouse, I made an appointment with the president of the community college to complain. After that meeting, a Latino activist with farm worker roots, who was also an affirmative rights activist, Rudy Ortega, took me seriously, and counseled me. He sent away for law school catalogues. He showed me how to transfer to 4-year universities. Without Rudy, I may have been successfully funneled into 2-year vocational school, losing out on higher education, being sold vocational training as a “college degree,” to meet the demands of the business community.

Due to Rudy’s exceptional guidance, I was able to choose classes in community college that would transfer to universities for credit towards my undergraduate degree. After 2 years of community college, I successfully transferred to a state university. I was able to fund my B.A. degree through financial aid, such as the Pell Grant (www.fafsa.ed.gov), and scholarships. Once at the university, I began to ask about law school preparation and I met THE WALL again. Counselors did not take me seriously. They lectured me on how I could not afford to go to law school, so they would not waste their time counseling me on my fantasies. So, I plodded through the law school catalogues myself. I wrote to the Law School Admission Test/LSAT (www.lsac.org) administrators and received an LSAT fee waiver for the $100+ test. You must take the LSAT before you can apply to most accredited American law schools. A similar situation exists for most American graduate schools, for Masters and PhD/Doctorate programs, with the Graduate Records Exam/GRE (www.gre.org). You must take the GRE before you can apply to many graduate schools. And a fee waiver is available for the GRE, also. I began to write law schools, asking for a wavier of the $50 - $100 application fees they were charging just to apply. Half of the schools I asked granted the fee waiver.

After applying to law school, I got a few acceptance letters, that also asked for approximately $100 to hold my place at their law school. Soon thereafter, I received phone calls and letters from EVERY SINGLE LAW SCHOOL THAT ACCEPTED ME,
saying they were happy I applied and was accepted, but there was no way I could afford to go to law school. I was heavily discouraged by the schools themselves. I was actually told by two of the schools that accepted me, that I needed to go find a husband, then come back to them! Angry, I wrote letters to all of these schools, condemning them for using people like me as statistics for affirmative action by accepting us, but then thwarting our attendance by constructively blocking the facilitation of our attendance, which includes funding. One law school responded by offering me a $16,000 scholarship to attend. I went to that law school. But first I had to write a letter asking for a waiver of the $100 place holding fee. Due to diligence, I received a fee waiver for the LSAT, law school admissions fees, and the placement holding fee, so even if you are low-income, you CAN go to law school!

Once in law school, I fought discrimination again. Work-study jobs were created by the government to give employment opportunities to those who traditionally have experienced prejudice in this arena, such as the poor, women, minorities, etc. The idea was to allow those under-represented in certain fields, to gain experience, in a previously class-insulated field. But when I got to law school, REALLY needing a work-study job, they told me all the jobs went to students with “prior law experience,” thereby defeating the entire purpose of the program. I petitioned the law school president and the federal work-study program itself , but was never able to get a work-study job at my law school. I passed my first year of law school, against all odds, in poverty, a single mom without family or spouse. I even got the third highest grade in the class in first year contracts. I passed my second year of prerequisites, also. Then money ran out, so I have 2/3 of a law (Doctorate of Jurisprudence/J.D.) degree! But I am not done with my schooling yet. A few years have now past, and I plan to return to academia once again, next fall. AS REVENGE! They are not getting rid of me that easy!

If America dispersed educational opportunities based on merit, not money, folks like me would have been assisted through law school, and Dan Quayle would have been offered an A.A. degree in Motel and Hotel Management or Early Childhood Education. I went as far as I could on obnoxious persistence, as revenge, and on pure intellectual merit. And yes, I accrued huge law loan debts. But so did our Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who did not finish paying off his law loans until long into his career, as a Supreme Court judge! I have time.

Going to universities and graduate/professional schools as revenge is a wonderful activist step. (And you may be able to con your parents into thinking you have changed your radical ways and are going back to school, so they may pay for it, not knowing you are going to school as revenge on the system!) Nuclear physicists are dangerous nuclear protesters. Street performers with law degrees are dangerous. Medical doctors and dentists who become street activist medics are dangerous. Nothing ruins a conservative argument better than someone with equal or greater credentials, saying the opposite. Activists can use the school system against the status quo. You can not only disrupt political science classes on campus with actual intellectual debate, but you come out with a “strap-on degree” that can be used when necessary. KNOW THINE ENEMY! What better way than by attending their schools? Why is it that “eco-terrorists” don’t attend forestry programs at the University of Washington to see how the big boys do their logging? Then plan their monkeywrenching? Knowing the insides of systems is as important as whatever you can see from the outside.

It is no coincidence that education has long been kept from the masses. In the old church-states, the clergy could read, but the parishioners could not. In the American south, the slave owners’ children could go to school, but the slaves’ children could not. School has been considered a luxury, that only those with money, who do not need to labor instead with their time, can afford. Women were not allowed into olden law schools, like Notre Dame and Harvard, until the 1960’s. James Meredith, in 1962, after battles with the U.S. Supreme Court, was the first black man allowed to register at the University of Mississippi. It took an escort of deputy federal marshals, U.S. border patrolmen, and federal prison guards, to protect him from the angry mob of over two thousand that came to protest him entering into that state university. Guns, bricks and Molotov cocktails were thrown at the police protecting Meredith, police used tear gas on the mob. By the end of the riot, two were dead, 28 marshals had been shot and 160 were injured. All because a black man wanted to register for attendance at the University of Mississippi in 1962. Take a minute to think about this. Who has had access to our state universities? Why do you think there has been a battle for access to education by the poor, women, and minorities? What is the motive of the resistance to these groups attending colleges and professional schools, such as law schools and medical schools? Think about that. Think about it hard.

I chanted an affirmation in law school: “Dan Quayle did it. So can you.” May my story inspire you to embrace higher education as revenge on the system.