Law Ball 2013: A Recollection

Adam Gleeson
Volume 3, Issue 7, (Originally Published on Monday 22nd April)
 
It is 11:30 pm and I am standing in the middle of the Peninsula Ballroom listening to the saxophone sample made by famous by pop artist and recovering codeine addict Macklemore’s world-wide hit ‘Thrift Shop’. I glance around and I feel like I’ve been transported into Picasso’s Guernica. Bowties that have been cross-referenced against YouTube tutorials and double-checked by apathetic housemates now just resemble un-tied nooses. The MAC makeup that was once neatly applied is no longer so. Half-finished Crown Lager beer bottles fill the perimeter of the dance floor. They act as a warning against deciding to drink a beer whose target market is suburban football change rooms. Female attendees have already begun complaining about the state of their feet and fetishizing the moment they return home to remove their heels. A first year is perilously close to spilling the red wine they have managed to sneak past the ponytailed security attendant who is taking his responsible service of alcohol responsibilities very seriously. The DJ transitions into a questionable mash-up of Kelis’ playground rap hit Milkshake with 1999 one-hit-wonder ‘Better Off Alone’ by Eurodance act Alice Deejay. The dance-floor howls with approval. Apparently for many, the night is only beginning.
 
It is 9:00 pm and a jazz band has just finished playing their cover of Gotye’s well-received 2011 pop hit ‘Somebody I Used To Know’. I glance down at my main course of porterhouse beef and wonder if the rumours of an #OccupyPeninsula-type takeover due to the function centre’s refusal to also provide an entree meal will prove to be correct. I begin to climb the stairs to the communal bathroom and hear a table of first years complain that ever since the imitation Huxtaburgers at the Law Camp, they have been unable to even look at a menu that does not contain the words ‘grass-fed’ or ‘slowcooked’. I make a mental note to tell superchef John Azzopardi. Hopefully this will get me an invitation to one of his infamous six-course dinner parties. A person drying his hands in the bathroom is urging a friend to give his number instead of his own to any girl he meets tonight. Apparently it will be funny. The friend is not in an agreeable mood. It is every man for himself tonight. I return to my table and am nearly caught in the cross fire of bread rolls being tossed around the ballroom. I wonder what time dessert will be served.
 
It is 2:30 am and I am sitting in the La Di Da nightclub smoking area and watching students who I did not realise maintained an existence outside of the Level 3 study area having their night ended by tired bouncers. Some fight their way to return into to the nightclub and the comforting warmth of 300 other students putting their hands up like they got a $20 bill. They are not yet ready to accept the honest truth of a Pie Face sausage roll and a dull Friday headache. Instead, they are removed even more unceremoniously the second time by the tired bouncers. The bouncers clearly do not realise who these students are or where they clerked.
 
It is 7:30 pm and I have just departed a taxi and begun to walk into the wind tunnel that is the Docklands Central Pier. I notice the artificial turf that is acting as a de-facto red carpet for keen law students entering onto a road to perdition. It’s time for Law Ball.
 
Adam Gleeson