In 1973 and at the age of 24, I walked into Sensenbrenner Hall for the first time, hoping I could transfer from Chicago Kent to Marquette. My husband had been offered a teaching position at Menomonee Falls East High School and I was happy to return to my home state. I met with Dean Bob Boden who could not have been more gracious in telling me that Marquette would be happy to let me enroll as a 2L.  So in the fall of 1973 I began classes with the 2Ls (except that I had to take Professor Aiken’s first year civil procedure year long course…an experience in and of itself).  In part, it was like starting law school all over again.

There was no orientation or introduction to anything at the law school. My first memory of meeting a student occurred when, on that first day, I was standing next to Barbara Berman. As many of you may recall, we lived, sat and interacted in alphabetical order. My last name at the time was also Berman. After Barbara found that out she said, “I hope you are smarter than me so if we get mixed up, I can benefit from it.”  That was the beginning of our life long friendship.

As the Law School community prepares to leave our current home and move into a new facility, it seems appropriate to pause and recall some of the memorable events that have taken place in Sensenbrenner Hall over the years.  Professor Michael McChrystal shares the third of what we hope will be many recollections of classroom surprises, distinguished visitors, and construction oddities associated with our present surroundings.  These memories will ensure that Sensenbrenner Hall lives on forever in our hearts. 

 For many years, the Wall of Judges, on the first floor hallway in old Sensenbrenner, included photographs of alums who were county or circuit court judges in the state.  The wall was filled with photos, which were probably six by eight inches in size, if I recall correctly.  There was a statistic floating around that one in every twenty graduates was a judge, although I have no sense of the accuracy of that count, nor even of how “judge” would be defined for that purpose.

I first walked into Sensenbrenner Hall on August 1^st, 1966.  I was a newly appointed Associate Professor and the Director of the MU Law School Institute on Poverty and the Law.  The federal Office of Economic Opportunity had smiled on the MU Law School with a grant to the tune of about $250,000. 

Alas, even then our beloved Sensenbrenner Hall lacked sufficient office space, and the Institute on Poverty was outposted to rooms on the third floor of the Varsity Theater Building (a couple of blocks west on Wisconsin Avenue).

However, I was not completely cut off from the rest of the faculty.  Dean Robert Boden, who had hired me out of Texas Southern University Law School, urged me to meet with the faculty at its daily 10 a.m. coffee hour in a tiny room in the basement of Sensenbrenner Hall.  There, four or five out of the seven-member law faculty would opine on the latest fortunes of the MU Basketball Warriors or the Green Bay Packers (depending on the season).