Sold!
The Law School recently played host to one of its more
unique community events when The Initiative for Public Interest Law at Yale
held its annual public interest auction.
The public interest auction is one of several fundraisers conducted during
the year by The Initiative, which uses the proceeds to fund public interest
work around the globe.
The auction relies on goods and services donated by BAR/BRI
(a bar prep company), law firms, the New Haven community, and YLS students, faculty,
and staff. Items are first offered in a
silent auction. If you missed the
announcements, you'll know the auction has begun when a quarter of the main
hallway is lined with tables full of bidding sheets. Items with bids over $100 are then moved to
the live auction, held during our Friday happy hour in the Dining Hall. There are always a few items which inspire
heated bidding wars, so the event is entertaining for participants and
spectators alike.
Some of this
year's more unique items on the auction block included:
- a day sail on Long Island Sound for five people on a 27
foot sailboat;
- a dinner party for six, cooked by a former professional
chef;
- poker lessons from the winner of the 2008 World Series of
Poker;
- an original three-minute play on a theme of the winner's
choosing;
- lunch with two New York Times legal reporters;
- a guided sea-kayaking excursion;
- four box seats to a Yankees game;
- poker night for five at the home of Professors Chua and
Rubenfeld;
- Italian feast for six at Professor Calabresi's farm;
- two Scrabble games with Professor Ellickson; and
- a beer tasting at the home of Professor Meares with
award-winning theater writer and director Tina Landau.
The Initiative is a student organization which provides
start-up funds to innovative non-profit projects that may have difficulty
obtaining money from more traditional sources due to the subject matter or
approach taken by the project.
Non-profit projects submit grant proposals to The Initiative, which then
chooses projects based on a multi-round selection process. One-year grants of up to $30,000 are then
distributed to the selected projects. Past
grant recipients include projects that aid female asylum seekers who are
escaping gender-based violence and torture; develop and bring impact litigation
to combat source-of-income discrimination in Maryland's housing market; provide
legal services to NYC's growing elderly LGBT
population; and develop and implement curricula and advocacy materials on
patient confidentiality for use by health care professionals in Kenya,
Ethiopia, and Malawi.