Wabash senior Patrick McAlister has been editor of the Bachelor and an active campus leader. Friday night he sat at the Lawyer’s reunion dinner with David Kendall ’66 and wrote about the experience:
McAlister – I’ve been to a lot of dinners in Detchon Hall. As a senior, I don’t think a semester’s passed without spending an evening conversing with faculty, students and alums over the meal prepared by Bon Appetit. While I’ve never had an unpleasant time, most of the dinners are hardly memorable. Friday night was a striking exception.
This weekend Wabash hosted its first ever Lawyer’s Reunion. Wabash men in the legal field from all across the country descended on Crawfordsville to discuss contemporary issues in the law, catch up with old friends and watch the Little Giants pummel Kenyon.
Friday night, those who made the trip for the reunion had a dinner in Deutchon. I, along with a few other current students, joined them. I expected a similar dining experience to the ones I’ve had before. That couldn’t have been farther from the truth.
I had the good fortune of sitting at a table with renowned attorney David Kendall ‘66, Wabash Constitutional Law Professor Scott Himsel ‘85, President White, National Association of Wabash Men president Jim Dimos ‘83 and two other current Wabash students. I was even more fortunate that the night’s conversation focused in on constitutional law. We talked about cases, interesting books written about the subject and personalities of the justices.
It goes without saying that both Dimos’ and Himsel’s knowledge of the legal field on a constitutional scale would have made for excellent dinner conversation by itself. They knew Constitutional Law and understood how the Supreme Court justices’ personalities that shaped the law.
Kendall, however, knew personally how the law was shaped and how the individual justices shaped the law. He clerked for Justice Byron White, and had anecdotes about his time in the clerkship. He shaped Constitutional law as an advocate for inmates on death row. So, when one of us brought up a recent book on the court or discussed the personalities of some of the justices, Kendall had a personal story that connected directly to the conversation. He had actually been there.
That dinner in Detchon reflected everything I love about this College well. It was a substantive conversation about a topic all at the table were deeply interested in. As an undergraduate, I had direct access to alumni in Himsel and Dimos who were well versed in a subject I care about. They were willing to talk to a lowly undergraduate about it. In David Kendall, I also had the great fortune of meeting one of the men who shaped the subject directly. They cared about what I had to say and responded to my questions and comments with equal weight to what else was being discussed. No other place provides you with that level of respect.
Where else but Wabash do things like this happen?
