ORONO — Scott Labby recently sent off a rejection letter to Harvard University.

He thanked the prestigious school for its interest in him, but informed them he would be going to law school at Yale instead.

Not bad for a high school drop-out.

Ten years ago, Labby likely didn’t know where Yale was, let alone give any thought to attending the Ivy League school.

Labby, who grew up in a mill town north of Bangor that he’d rather not name, dropped out of high school when he was 16. Both his parents, who are now deceased, also had dropped out of school.

Although he was an avid reader, especially of Stephen King, Labby said he never fit in at school. He decided to quit the day he had an argument with an English teacher over whether stubbornness was a virtue or a fault. Labby staunchly asserted it was a virtue. He was told he was wrong and a loser and he left.

He spent the next few years wandering around the Northeast “experimenting with delinquency and drugs,” as he wrote in his law school application essay. He lived in New York City and Worcester, Mass., working odd jobs and hanging out. He earned a GED during his travels.

He was never in trouble with the law, but realized that his life was headed in the wrong direction. He had no goals and no real means of bettering himself.

“I realized I had better get busy living or get busy dying,” Labby recalled.

His transformation began one day when he was reading about black South African activist Steve Biko, who died at the age of 30 in police custody. Labby recalled that his head hurt and he was dizzy from “drinking too much liquor and doing too many drugs.” He compared his dismal life with what Biko had fought for and accomplished in his short life.

“I felt ashamed of myself,” he said. “I knew it was time to get myself together.

He had returned to Maine and was living with a woman who was attending the University of Maine and he saw that, despite his earlier school experience, education could change one’s life.

So, at 22, he enrolled in two continuing education courses — astronomy and anthropology — at the University of Maine. He did well and enjoyed the courses, so he decided to apply to the university as a full-time student.

In a January 1995 admission interview, which he requested because he had applied very late in the process, Labby said he would understand if the university didn’t want to take a chance on him. But, he added, if they took that chance, he thought it would pay off.

Assistant Director of Admissions Elizabeth Downing, one of the people who interviewed Labby for admission, thought so too. “He was very sincere, very persistent,” she recalled.

She said she was not surprised that he has done so well.

Not only is Labby going on to one of the most highly regarded law schools in the country, but he won a prestigious Truman Scholarship as well. Labby is the first UM graduate to win the award, which includes $30,000 for graduate school. He will spend a week later this month in Missouri working with the other 60 scholars on the development of national policy. Labby’s group will focus on HMOs.

The affable 25-year-old history major is also this year’s distinguished senior in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and was recently inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He will graduate from UM today.

“I’m ecstatic about my future,” Labby said. “I never graduated from anything — not even rehab. Now, I have the opportunity to do great things.”

Great expectations

And, he has lots of great things in mind. First, he has assured his friends that he won’t let his recent success change him. He will not cut off his ponytail, shave his beard, stop wearing his silver hoop earrings or trade his T-shirt for a suit. He also won’t forget that he was once a poor kid without much of a future. And, he definitely won’t stop challenging conventional wisdom.

For example, he wants to play football at Yale, a school he chose to attend because it would forgive part of his student loan debt if he takes a low-paying job as a public advocacy lawyer. It would be unusual for a law student to play on the team, but Labby is convinced he is good enough and willing to ruffle some feathers to do the unconventional. He has not played organized sports since playing on a community league football team as a youth.

Then, he wants to continue research he began at UM about the parallels in language and images between the memos written by top government officials during the Cold War and the era’s horror movies. Labby hopes to translate that research into a masters degree in history, while also earning a law degree.

On the legal side of his academic career, Labby plans to continue to search for new constitutional grounds on which to argue against the death penalty. He hopes to work for the Department of Justice and argue a death penalty case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In addition, he’d like to represent small-time artists and musicians in their quests to trademark their work.

After that, he’d like to return to Orono to teach continuing education courses at UM while doing legal work for disadvantaged clients. He also fancies being the president of the university, but said that would be a tough job to land unless he also pursues a PhD.

All the while, the writer known for his pithy columns in the Maine Campus would like to keep writing about social and political issues.

“We have a great ability to do good and give things back or we have great power to do horrible things,” Labby said.

He plans to give things back because so many people have helped him along his twisted path.

Labby said he’d never have gone to college if it were not for grants and loans from the federal government and the assistance and encouragement he received from UM faculty and staff, particularly anthropology Professor Dan Sandweiss, who taught a graduate-level course Labby took during his sophomore year.

Sandweiss said he first took notice of Labby when he scored the highest grade on a mid-term in an anthropology course. He said he was impressed with Labby’s genuine interest in learning and his propensity to take a wide variety of classes because he was interested in a diversity of subjects. He minored in anthropology.

Sandweiss, who has been recognized nationally for his research into the effects of El Ninos on ancient civilizations, said he was very suprised to learn of Labby’s hardscrabble past.

“I expect to see him go on to great success in law or writing or both or whatever it is he decides he ultimately wants to do,” he said.

Giving something back

Labby has already given something back to the community. With the help of the assistant dean for student affairs, he set up a peer tutoring and mentoring program that paired the campus’ top students with those who needed additional help. Many of the students who sought assistance were a lot like Labby used to be — they were academically unprepared and some were poor and from dysfunctional families.

With financial assistance from the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy, Labby is looking into expanding his program to other institutions. If such a mentoring program was around when he was in high school, Labby said it would have likely helped him a lot.

In addition to going to college full time, Labby managed the Bangor office of the Maine People’s Alliance, a 16,000 member group that advocates for the interests of the state’s people, especially those with limited financial resources.

Labby said he enjoyed working with MPA staff members, many of whom came from disadvantaged backgrounds. He said he encouraged four people who worked in the Bangor office to go to college.

Life is a chain, he said, and, because many people have lent their support to him, he must pass along that support to others to continue the chain.

Although his life has taken a sharp turn for the better, Labby strongly recommends that younger students don’t follow in his early path.

“I dropped out and it worked out for me but I certainly wouldn’t recommend that others do it,” he said.