MY SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR STORY
I was working at Fordham Law School in NYC. We had a brand new high-up administrator who oversaw our department. I can’t remember her position title — is there such a thing as Vice Dean? Something like that. She was VERY unpopular from the get-go.
Early on in her tenure, an occasion arose where Sandra Day O’Connor would be visiting the Fordham University School of Law. And to get to the room where she’d make her little speech, she would have to come to our floor and walk down our hallway that led to the atrium that led to the room. And the new Vice Dean(?) was absolutely APPALLED that Sandra. Day. O’Connor. herself, who was still a Supreme Court Justice at the time, would have to walk down that perfectly ordinary, absolutely nondescript hallway between the elevator and the atrium. No, no, no, this would not do! Doesn’t anyone else realize that we’re talking about SANDRA DAY FUCKING O’CONNOR HERE???? Get with it, people!!!
Her solution was to rent art to put on the walls. And so, at some (at least relatively) great expense, a company that rents out art was hired. Two or three people arrived one day, a couple of weeks or so before the great Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor herself (the REAL one, mind you) would be walking down that FORMERLY distastefully plain hallway–it’s really a wonder that we survived that hallway ourselves, when you think about it. All the tables and any junk in the path had already been cleared, of course–this was a micro-managed stroll. They measured the distances between art pieces. They made pencil marks on the walls to make sure the art would be straight and level. And then they hung the art on the hallway walls. And when I say that they hung the art on the walls, what I mean is that they bolted the art into the walls. It may have been a temporary rental, but they were mounted to be displayed permanently.
Soon The Big Day came. Sandra Day O’Connor!!!! We were all about to pee in our pants with excitement!!! By which I mean only the Vice Dean(?) was even remotely that excited. But who cares, she was going to pass through our now newly-beautified hallway! No longer any worries that her heralded eyes would have to suffer a foul-looking foyer for the portion of her walk that could take, depending on her pace, anywhere from 15 to as long as 30 seconds.
And it happened. She really walked down the hallway that passed OUR department! Sandra Day O’Connor, Supreme Court Justice, the one and only! You could hear the minor commotion as the journey was in progress. You could see the white of her hair bob as she passed by. She was, of course, surrounded by so many people that there was not a chance that she would even notice that there was any art on the walls. Hey, that’s not the point, and I don’t appreciate that attitude. There’s all kinds of situations that COULD have happened that would have left her looking at bland, artless hallway walls, and THEN what would have happened? See, you just don’t think ahead, do you, Smarty Pants? And besides, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to you that, after the little event, she had to walk back through the SAME hallway to leave…which was, more or less, an identical non-event. But we were covered!
A couple of weeks after Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor walked down the gorgeously-inspired hallway that passed our department, those bitches wanted their art back. I was rather enjoying it. How, in fact, HAD my eyes survived before? They brought their tools and ever so carefully removed each framed piece…by which I mean they more or less ripped it off the walls. Now in each spot where a piece of art once was, it was graced with a gaping hole where a screw had been, often surrounded by cracks from the stress of yanking them out. There’s your beautiful hallway: two long rows of holes and cracks on each side of you that can’t go unnoticed. Our once exquisitely bland vestibule, now looking about as shitty as you could possibly imagine.
It appeared to be true, though: people with eyes as sensitive as mine and Sandra Day O’Connor’s simply could not bear to be around artless hallways. It was not too long after this incident that I resigned. The Vice Dean(?), if I’m not mistaken, was eventually chased out by faculty wielding torches and pitchforks.
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