Jury duty

Oh, Massachusetts, what a delight! I feel so incredibly privileged to live here amongst the civil, warmhearted Red Sox and Patriots fans, in perhaps the most exciting, personally fulfilling weather in the world, and finally learn the correct way to pronounce words that end in -ar. Well, I do declare, I definitely owe a debt of gratitude to the great Bay State.

I was, therefore, predictably overjoyed to receive notification in the mail that I was to be granted the great honor of performing my civic duty as a member of a jury pool at the Edward J. Sullivan Courthouse in Cambridge. A moment of distress followed my initial ecstasy. While I am fortunate enough to attend college in Massachusetts, I sadly do not call New England home. My permanent residence is a small town north of San Francisco, California, and I gasped at the thought that I might not be allowed to make the pilgrimage to that great monument to justice and Ed Sullivan.

I thought that perhaps the State of Massachusetts, under the guise of appearing considerate, might have some cruel law to revoke my right, as a college student who does not reside in the state, to serve on a jury which would decide cases tried in Massachusetts.

I am not sure how the state government would possibly justify the position that non-permanent residents be prevented from sitting on a jury. There could be some cute ploy to try and equate voting with being on a jury. Some conniving state legislator might have made the point that since college students who are registered to vote in their home states cannot vote in Massachusetts -- that is, they cannot participate in the Massachusetts legislative process -- they should not be allowed to participate in the judicial process. Well, I say take your parallel logic argument and shove it. I say double standards are a good thing. They keep you on your toes.

Another legislator might have tried to play the compassionate, understanding, student-phile card. He might have pointed out that people from all over the world come to Boston and pay tens of thousands of dollars to study here. Each class period, he might point out, is worth, -- depending on the school -- as much as $100, and much more to the student who will gain knowledge from attending. This legislator might further remind us that employers are compelled to pay jurors for time served. Will the university or college hold a special lecture period for those students who miss class because of jury duty? Most certainly not; that would be logistically impossible and expensive.

How, then, is the college student to be compensated for class time lost? Allow me to point out here that the rebuttal to this argument is quite clear: students will learn much, much more about just how efficient our justice system really is by sitting for jury selection, and, should they be so lucky as to be selected, they will learn what could otherwise only be acquired by sitting through hours of tiresome movies and television programs such as Twelve Angry Men and The Practice.

My thoughts wandered from those party-pooper hypothetical legislators to the possible cases that I might be asked to decide. I thought of murder, rape, tax evasion.... and the granddaddy of them all, the vehicular manslaughter case against the guy that drunkenly backed over Super Bowl revelers on Sunday night. What if I were asked to decide this case? I mulled it over, and a lump developed in my throat as I realized that right there in front of me was yet another surely unjust reason to exclude me from deciding the fates of those charged in the state of Massachusetts.

I realized that I could not even drink alcohol legally yet; in fact, I was two years from being able to do so. I had to double check the jury handbook to reassure myself that I was eligible to serve. I was overjoyed to find out that, although I cannot actually drink alcohol, I can in fact send someone who drinks and drives to jail.

Having assured myself that none of these arguments had been used effectively to block college students from participating in the magic that is Massachusetts judicial procedure, I began planning my exciting day at the courthouse. I laid out what I was going to wear, drew a map from Miller Hall to the Davis T-Stop to the Lechmere T-Stop to the Courthouse, and started to fill out my juror questionnaire. I had a bit of trouble when I came to the part about my place of residence. I did not want to let slip the fact that I was not from Massachusetts for fear that I might be rejected by the judge or by either sides' lawyers.

However, I could not lie on my questionnaire! Quite a quandary. I resolved it by supplying both my places of residence, cleverly deducing that no one would be able to tell in which state I was considered a permanent resident. Finally, fully prepared for the most exciting, useful, magical day of my life, I retired to the comfort of my bed after setting my alarm for 6:15 a.m.. After all, I had a long walk to Davis Square, a trip on not only the Red Line, but also the lovely, and only usually infrequent Green Line, and an extremely rigorous security inspection to look forward to before I reached that holy grail of American justice, the Fifth Floor of the Sullivan Courthouse.

Steven Ward is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major.