Fact Checking the PILA Auction
Last week, the Public Interest Law Association held its annual live and silent auctions. A favorite event in the Law School community, the PILA Auction gives students who are on the brink of a mental breakdown a brief respite from finals season doom. Students are invited to support their fellow public interest classmates, dress up, drink up, bid on auction items, and dance. Sadly, many questionable rumors have been spreading about this year’s auction, so the Law Weekly has put its finest reporters to the work of separating PILA fact from PILA fiction.
CLAIM: Proceeds from the PILA Auction go directly to supporting public interest law students so they can afford summer expenses and pursue fulfilling careers.
FALSE. Proceeds from the PILA Auction ensure that public interest law students can eat something besides their casebooks. In prior years, the PILA Auction has raised as much as $20,000, which is a little more than what a summer associate makes for one month of lunching and day drinking.
CLAIM: The Law Weekly’s donation—a highly-coveted viewing of the infamous Retracted Edition—was the highest-selling item at the silent auction on Friday night.
PARTIALLY TRUE. The viewing of the Retracted Edition sold for a modest $10 million, making it the highest-selling item at both the silent auction and the live auction.
CLAIM: Competitive law students enjoy the thrill of out-bidding their classmates.
PARTIALLY TRUE. The day after the auction, winners generally experience buyer’s remorse when they wake up with a headache and an email saying that they owe $100 for a Kroger coupon booklet.
CLAIM: PILA is grateful to all Law School organizations for their generous contributions which make the auction a success.
FALSE. PILA is deeply disappointed, but not surprised, that the best contribution your organization could muster was a $20 gift card to Chipotle.
CLAIM: Last year, after UVA Law exceeded its $400 million fundraising goal, the Law School Foundation promptly reduced summer grants for public interest law students.
FALSE. No wait, shit. This one is true.
CLAIM: The Federalist Society at UVA was asked to donate to this year’s PILA Auction but declined.
FALSE. FedSoc donated an auction item for the first time in over ten years. FedSoc had been banned from participating in the PILA Auction ever since its 2012 donation, a clerkship for Justice Clarence Thomas, caused a stampede at the silent auction, resulting in severe injuries and multiple lawsuits.
CLAIM: Big-ticket items at the live auction included a hunting trip with Meg Bryce, a copy of Professor Frampton’s new folk LP, a cooking class with Professors Frost & Clarens, and a “get-out-of-the-bar-exam” pass.
FALSE. Only the last one is real.
CLAIM: The PILA Auction is made possible with the generous support of the Darden School of Business, which allows PILA to rent out the Forum Hotel’s event space for the evening at cost.
FALSE. The Forum Hotel charged PILA at 200% of the market rate.
CLAIM: The American Constitution Society, the Law School’s champion for progressive legal advocacy, generously donated a big-ticket item.
FALSE. ACS did not donate to the auction because its membership Venn diagram with PILA is nearly a circle.
CLAIM: The Forum Hotel generously raised drink prices to provide an additional source of revenue for PILA.
FALSE. The Forum Hotel raised drink prices and pocketed the extra sales revenue.
CLAIM: PILA asked Lambda to host Halloqueen on Thursday, breaking with prior years’ practice, to avoid forcing students to choose between two of the fall semester’s most memorable evenings.
FALSE. PILA merely wishes to establish its dominance over the Christmas holiday and welcome in the season with the first of many Mariah Carey sing-alongs.
CLAIM: The law firms that sponsored the PILA Auction will think less of you if you worked a public interest job for your 1L summer.
PARTIALLY TRUE. The sponsoring law firms will think much less of you if you worked a public interest job for your 1L summer.
CLAIM: Executive Editor Garrett Coleman ’25 spilled white wine all over the bathroom floor at The Forum.
PARTIALLY TRUE. It was red, actually.
CLAIM: More students would have attended the silent auction if there had been an open bar.
FALSE. More students would have attended the silent auction if they were not all hungover from Halloqueen.
CLAIM: Professor Xiao Wang generously donated a chance to beat him in a tennis match.
FALSE. The winner of this auction item does not have a chance in hell.
CLAIM: This is one of the worst articles written about the PILA Auction since 1948.
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