Vital news for all UCLA readers:

At the beginning of the school year the Dean instituted a "free lunch" program enabling faculty to take students to lunch, typically at that mecca of cuisine known as the Faculty Center. In typical state-government fashion, professors may get reimbursed for meal costs up to $7 per student. So kids, steer clear of the lobster.

Let's be clear: like most free lunches, there's nothing free about this one either. Your (dramatically increasing) tuition provides the budget for most school expenditures, including these lunches. So it might be more accurate to call it the "no marginal cost lunch".

But what, you might ask, is the point of these lunches? In my experience, professors are not exactly climbing over each other to socialize with students, let alone at their special clubbe.

My unverified hypothesis is that it is part of the Dean's campaign to promote judicial clerkships to 2Ls. My first lunch, Prof Tax* told a long story about how he regretted not doing a clerkship and strongly encouraged all of us not to make that mistake. When I checked with some friends how their lunch with a different professor went, they said she spent most of the time pushing clerkships.

Coincidence? You tell me. To be fair, profs #2 and #3 did not discuss clerkships. So at this point there's 50% evidence for my conspiracy theory. Just one more shred & I'll have a preponderance!

In any case – this program seems to be mostly publicized by word of mouth. I have already hit up 3 out of 4 professors for free lunches this semester and I suggest you do the same. You've already paid for the lunches. You might as well eat them.

* Extra props to Prof Tax for letting us order off the deluxe menu. We blasted past the $7 limit all the way to, I don't know, $10 or $11. And you know what, I think we were worth it.

24 Mar 06