NEWS
Monday, September 15, 2014 5
Welcome from L&L
Here’s what we’ve been up to
toby samson › l&l president
H
ello osgoode. w elcome, and welcome back! It is an exciting year for us
to be here, as this year is the Legal and
Literary Society’s 139th year. Just kidding. While that is true, the big deal this year is
Osgoode’s 125th anniversary. Students just like us
have been dreading back to school for a full century
and a quarter! Now, before I get all “reflective” on
you, I want to take a moment to give you an update on
some of L&L’s happenings.
Orientation Week 2014
First and foremost, I’d like to extend a big hello to
those in the first-year class who have not yet been
forced to endure me and the rest of Legal and Lit.
We’re all nice and approachable, I promise. I’d also
like to thank Steven Broadley, Hongyi Geng, and
Melissa George, O-Week’s Chair and Vice-Chairs, for
all of their hard work that made the week a big success. I guess the rest of O-Committee and the leaders
were alright, too.
Events
L&L has some great plans to make events even better
this year. Vice-President External Bethany McKoy
has created a clubs calendar so that Osgoode’s 50+
clubs can better coordinate their events. No more
flipping a coin about which great speaker to go see!
On the more fun front, Social Convenor Ladi
Onayemi has been working hard to launch
“Wednesdays With Ladi.” At alternating Wednesdays
throughout the year, Ladi will bring together various clubs and sponsors to host a reception in the
JCR. Ladi’s excited to strengthen Osgoode’s social
environment and bring more attention to the events
put together by different clubs and organizations
on campus. Don’t know what all of those groups are
doing? Ladi, with the assistance of Vice-President
Internal Chris West, has set up fun new tumblr to
help everyone stay on top of the Oz life. Check it out at
http://pond-sentinel.tumblr.com/
OzPost
As per usual, 3L Rep Doug Judson had a wonderful idea to help honour Osgoode’s 125th. Throughout
the year, the #OzPost mailbox, which showed up the
first day of O-week, will appear on various occasions
with blank #OzPost postcards. Students and Osgoode
community members will be able to leave an anonymous message, reflection, or drawing in response
to the prompt on the postcard before placing it into
our mailbox. L&L will compile the cards periodically
to share or publish to capture a year in the life of the
Osgoode community.
Now that you’ve been caught up on L&L’s happenings,
I want to share some of my hopes and observations for
the year. Yeah, this is the corny part. Coming up to
my third year at Osgoode, I’ve had the opportunity
to learn a lot about how law school works. You know
what I’ve learned? Like absolutely everything else in
life, law school is what you make it. It can be everything you’ve heard about it, but it also doesn’t need to
ê L&L is pleased to launch the OzPost Project, a community-sourced mail art initiative to mark Osgoode’s 125th year
as one of Canada’s finest law schools.
be anything like what you’ve heard. While this may
seem like advice for the 1Ls, I encourage each of you
to think about what your time at Osgoode has, is, and
will be to you. It is really easy to think that the three
(or more or less) years you spend here must reflect
something in particular, whether it is grades, involvement, or making connections. It doesn’t. It needs to
reflect you - your life, your priorities. Those are, and
should be, different for each and every one of us.
I’ve been extremely lucky to have had a positive
experience at Osgoode, but it isn’t because the whole
system was set up for me. I’ve made my time here my
own, and because of that I know each day that there
isn’t anywhere else I would rather be (even during
exams). When we fall onto a path that doesn’t feel that
right, it becomes easy to get bogged down in the negatives. And I’ll level with you - at law school, there
are a fair few negatives. How do you move past them?
I don’t think you do. Rather, you move through them.
For some negatives and some people, all you can seem
to do is survive. But, I think a little adversity can go
a long way, and great ideas and changes rarely come
because everything is peachy keen.
On that note, as your student representatives,
we’re here to help make things at Osgoode better.
But we can’t do it alone. I challenge