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| Sunday, 26 March 2006 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Why Hector Jayewardene must be turning in his grave... (...or why Law College elite are rootless.)
What do all of the names above have in common? These were all Sri Lankans of stature, who made a significant contribution to post independence Sri Lankan society. But what's more significant, they were all recipients of the Hector Jaywardene Gold Medal, the most prestigious award in the annals of legal education in this country, awarded first in 1919.
The boards used to be the centerpiece of Law College memorabilia, displayed prominently as they should be on the first floor, adjacent to the architecturally splendid stairwell.. Law College politics brought the boards down, from what we hear --- with some callow young men of yesteryear spearheading the drive to bring down the boards on the flimsily grounds of knocking down the elite. (!!) But, the Law College establishment condoned this act of vandalism, which means that the Law College establishment has forgotten history. Though strenuous efforts have been made to get the boards back on the walls where they were, these have been ignored by the pathetically inept law college establishment. The boards have also not been updated with the names of recent winners. That's shabby, considering that the Hector Jayewardene Gold Medal for Address to the Jury is the school's most prestigious award. An elementary scrutiny of the names of past winners speaks for that; but more importantly, any lawyers would tell you that The Hector Jayewardene Gold Medal is the Law college equivalent of the President of the Oxford Union. Dayan Jayatillke once wrote that his father Mervyn De Silva beat K.N. Choksy for the Gold Medal. The legend surrounding the award was that it went to Law College's most colorful -- eventually its most remembered sons. Mervyn De Silva never became a lawyer in the end, but his contribution to Sri Lanka as a journalist is worth his weight - - to use the clich‚ - - in gold.
The Council of Legal Education has made Law College go through the rigours of change recently; some changes have been controversial to the point of disrupting the smooth functioning of legal education. But, at least those changes have had some rational basis for them, for better or for ill. But, to dump the Hector Jayewardene winners' plaque somewhere in the nether regions of a long and lonely law College corridor -- now that's crass. The boards etched in any viewer's memory the rich past of this institution which is housed in a building that's over a hundred years old -- a repository for the long saga of legal education in the environs of Hulftsdorph Hill.
Smash down the cities. Knock the walls to pieces. Break the factories and cathedrals, warehouses and homes Into loose piles of stone and lumber and black burnt wood....... |
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| Produced by Lake House |
J. R. Jayewardene, Stanley De Soysa, H. W. Jayewardene, Felix Dias, M.
Sivasithamparam, Sidath Sri Nandalochana and Mervyn De Silva. 
These days, the Law College honors prizewinners-past, by having the board
containing list of Hector Jayewardene Gold medal winners dumped on the Law
College floor, exposed to the elements. 
The Hector Jayewarnde trust allows for a medal in to be minted each year
for the winner from trust proceeds. Story goes that the gold medal was one
of the reasons J. R Jayewardne bragged about his law college education which
he said qualified him to be politically ahead of his contemporaries who had
read everything from economics to philosophy at LSE, Oxford and Cambridge.
Were the following sentiments in the minds of the Law College
establishment elite when they decided, in their cocky moment of abandon, to
put Law College's most cherished list near the gutters: 
