Surprising the 16 barely awake students in Law 254: Real World Contract Drafting, Ashton Kutcher barged into seminar room 4041 yesterday to reveal that the entire class had just been "punk'd." Rubbing their eyes and looking around in disbelief, the 2Ls and 3Ls in the Duke Law School upper level course could not at first understand what was going on.
"About 15 minutes into Professor Brock's tedious lecture my head started to bob and I began dosing off," related Andrea Aguillard, a 3L, describing what normally happens to her at the beginning of every awful Contract Drafting class. "I was then suddenly awoken as this camera crew, followed by that guy who is married to Demi Moore, rushed into our room. After a few minutes we gathered that the entire course was an elaborate hoax which, in retrospect, totally makes sense considering how chalk board-scrapingly dreadful this experience has been."
Kutcher is the star of MTV's hit series Punk'd, a show where viewers watch as celebrities fall victim to extravagant practical jokes. As the show has gained in popularity its producers have found it increasingly difficult to find unsuspecting prank targets.
Therefore, Kutcher and his team decided to switch their focus to law schools. The idea was simple: create a thoroughly unpleasant class and record the reactions of students when they were finally told of being tricked.
After getting the go-ahead from the network and Duke Law administrators, the show's content directors began creating the intricate ruse, purposely making the class sound appealing to entice unwary upperclassmen.
"Though the class was at 8:00 in the morning on Mondays I thought it would be worth it," mentioned Sam Gupta, a Duke 2L. "I am interested in transactional law and believed that a course taught by a practitioner about tangible legal skills would be quite useful."
From the very beginning, however, Gupta and his classmates were confronted with a carefully hatched series of pranks meant to engender high levels of stress and outrage.
"Professor Brock starts introducing the class and right away tells us that it will bear little relation to the course description, even though that was major reason why I took the class," asserted an angry Emily Stout, another Law 254 enrollee. "He says that he was surprised that previous classes did not have the requisite contracts background so instead of focusing on something cool like drafting the course would be a review and further exploration of fundamental contract law. I remember thinking, 'Holy shit is this fruitcake serious?'"
Though certain students dropped out, the majority stayed, hoping that the class would still be useful. Kutcher and the Punk'd crew were expecting this and made sure the class' professor, a trained actor and comedian, ratcheted up the course's appalling nature in the weeks to come.
According to students, the fake teacher started assigning at least 10 cases a week, totaling hundreds of pages of reading. Not only was the workload tremendous but he made sure to cold call students every class, asking them about the most inane and irrelevant details of often indecipherable court decisions.
"I remember around the third or fourth week complaining to a classmate about how Professor Brock should be disbarred and how it wasn't fair to make upperclassmen relive the 1L cold call experience" remarked Aguillar, the 3L. "I also recall saying that wouldn't it be great if whole thing was just a terrible joke. Who knew that I would be literally correct."
According to MTV, Duke was at first hesitant to allow the prank but eventually acceded when key officials, including the Dean, mentioned that they were fans of Kutcher's show and needed "some entertainment to help break up the day." After viewing initial footage from strategically hidden cameras, those who remained concerned quickly dropped any reservations.
"Oh my god, I can't tell you how amazing it is to watch some supposedly checked out 3L be cold-called three classes in a row, especially when you've had a long day of meetings," stated Duke's Dean of Student Affairs, Donald Smith. "Seeing the pure, red-hot hatred emanate from that student's face as he was forced to recite minute factual details finally convinced me that we were right to allow this practical joke to occur."
According to students, after the class was able to process of the shock of being punk'd, the mood turned from one of anger and confusion to extreme joy.
"Sure at first I was angry about being made to sit through an excruciatingly painful class taught by a guy who didn't know what he was talking about," admitted Gupta, the 2L. "But then I perked up after realizing that there would be no more Real World Contract Drafting in my life. After all, many of my real law school classes are just as bad but, unfortunately, they aren't practical jokes concocted by Kutcher's sick and twisted mind."
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