LSA election candidate responses to APALSA q's on diversity

Dear members,

This year APALSA has requested the LSA president and vp candidates to address our members regarding diversity at BC Law. Many have graciously responded with a statement; I hope that these will help provide some more information about each of their positions and in turn assist in your voting decisions.

Nadia Boctor, Candidate for President

What makes diversity important in law school is the same thing that makes it important in life. Difference of opinion generates thought which ultimately generates progress. When I was deciding where to attend law school most of my decision was based around urban environments. Often think about what all the cities I love have in common, they are all port cities, port cities have a larger population of immigrants and a healthy contingent of alternative lifestyles. Frankly, these various enclaves of culture generate more liberal, and for me more inviting, environments.

Being a minority student myself, its easy to feel depressed about the lack of other students who look like me, but I think overall if you stop and look at the amount of issues raised by different groups as well as the support a majority of our faculty and administration give us, I have no doubt we are moving ahead. Its merely a slow journey. But comparatively the law school is a leader in diversity for BC. On the downside, I extremely doubt there is anyway the LSA can increase addmittance of students for diversity purposes, I'm quite certain the school has their own policy about it and does whatever they please.

I think the best thing we can do is to show continually that the more diverse our school is the better it gets. We do this by continuing to raise events by motivating people to talk about the issues, and mostly by being kind and appreciating each others differences and learning from them. In my experience when you can get people excited about something you have the greatest impact. The LSA can work harder to hype up the importance by providing a series of events maybe one each month of the year committed to recognizing something important that each sub-group of people have changed about the american law or raise the one pressing issue that each minority group faces in society in a legal context and present a sophisticated lecture series about it, rather than just compiling a bunch of events into one month. I'm talking sophistication and power. If we could get the quality of the Chimerinsky event on a monthly basis I think it would surely be impressive. We could potentially use the 3rd World Law Journal as a resource for some of these events, as well as our contacts with the alterior organizations the the ALSA's actively communicate with. And most importantly we can try to have those in the administration who CAN change the face of diversity at BC to attend those events and see how important it is to us.


Gerry Cahill, Candidate for President

Thank you so much for giving the LSA candidates an opportunity to explain our positions on diversity. My positions on this issue, and others, are explained on my website in more detail than I can go into in this short message. I would encourage you to visit the website at www2.bc.edu/~cahillge/ .

Social and ethnic diversity in our student body and faculty is one of the school's core strengths, and at the same time an under-utilized source of great potential. I have three specific objectives for taking advantage of our community's wealth of backgrounds, and for encouraging administrative response to our increasingly diverse needs and goals.

1. In the Press: We should publish a small newsletter which will include articles from various student groups. In this newsletter, each student group will be able to contribute short pieces describing recent events or upcoming events of importance to the group. The LSA would compile these articles once a semester, and make them available to the entire student body. In this way, the whole student body will have an even greater opportunity to benefit from the groups' diverse perspectives and thoughts.

2. In Person: It's crucial for the LSA president to actively seek input from minority communities as to ways the student government can promote the interests of all students. As soon as the campaign rules would allow, I contacted all the school's student organizations representing minority communities. I've been meeting with them to hear about their goals, expectations, and frustrations. As LSA president, I plan to expand and deepen this dialogue to bring about meaningful changes consistent with the goals of our diverse community.

3. In the Community: Students need an easily-updateable calendar of events accessible through Agora or on the LSA website, where groups can publish the dates and times of their events. Such a calendar will allow students to know, at a glance, the various events available each day, and will allow student leaders to avoid scheduling conflicts with other groups. In this way, more of us will know about the wealth of events on campus, and more students will be able to attend these events and learn from them.

If you have any further questions, comments, or ideas, please don't hesitate to contact me. I'd really like to hear what you have to say.

Thanks!

Yours,
Gerry


Patrick Hurley, Candidate for President

The first thing the LSA can do to promote diversity is support existing programs such as the Students of Color Retreat before orientation and the diversity presentation during the orientation itself. These events, which occur upon arrival at BC, set the tone regarding diversity for each student's BC Law experience.

Each of us need look no further than our 1L sections to the diversity at BC Law: students of various ethnic backgrounds, ages, sexual orientations, religions, political ideologies, etc. We learn better, both inside the classroom and out, when we are encouraged and challenged by others whose worldview is different than our own. Yet we can do a better job, particularly outside the classroom.

We need better communication between all student groups, including the LSA, to avoid scheduling against each other as much as possible. Having an accessible calendar online would help this. We need to make sure the LSA is abreast of the events of all of the cultural organizations in particular and attempt to co-sponsor or help promote events together. One area I think this would be extremely effective is community service events. LSA should sponsor their monthly community service event with various organizations to increase turnout to the events, but also give students the opportunity to serve a community held dear by one of our cultural organizations.

During my time at BC Law I've tried to take advantage of the full range of events offered by various student groups. While this year, my primary focus has been serving as President of PILF, I've continued to attend events of other groups whenever possible. Some highlights of events I've attended are the Martin Luther King, Jr. service held in Trinity Chapel, the Inter-religious Dinner, the Diversity Month Keynote Speaker, the Diversity Town Hall, salsa lessons, and the Taste of BC. But even more importantly, I've tried throughout my time at BC Law to embrace my fellow students as individuals regardless of their background, with the knowledge that we have more to learn from each other than from any hornbook or treatise.

Without student diversity, BC Law would be a blander and less interesting place. I look forward to working with the leaders of student organizations to figure out the best way to collaborate and make the general population of BC Law more aware of the wonderful backgrounds of other students. The most important way to do this is by working closely with new organization officers as they are elected in the coming weeks. Thank you for your time, and I appreciate your support.


Pavlos Lykos, Candidate for Vice President

I'm not going to write to you as if I know what it means to be an Asian, Black, Latino or other minority student here at BC. What I am going to tell you is that as the son of two immigrant parents, and a First-Generation American myself, I know what it feels like to not be in the mainstream of society. I know what diversity is because, together, we comprise it here at BCLS. The only time the diversity I bring to the Law School came up before I attended was while I was sitting in Dean Rosselot's office in June 2004. She was giving me 5 minutes to convince her to take me off the wait list. Bringing three cultures and languages to BC is what coming here has allowed me to do and now I want to make sure that other students, with even more to offer, don't have to wait until the last minute to show the importance of the diversity they bring.

I believe Diversity can be tackled from two directions: from within and without. First, from within, let's put energy into what we already have and capitalize on the diversity within our walls. I hope to inspire the energy I'm talking about in getting all minority student groups, by means of the Diversity Committee, to collaborate and do more than put up signs, but have a real voice in the law school community and show diversity in full bloom rather than in bits and pieces.

Secondly, from the outside, the diversity issue can be best addressed by school admissions. I would propose an optional essay to provide students the opportunity to express how they feel they would contribute to diversity at BCLS. Granted, allowing optional essays on any topic already exists, but assigning an optional essay with the task of showcasing diversity would allow this important aspect to be assimilated into the admissions process in a meaningful way and not require it to be painfully extracted from heaps of admissions materials.

I believe that simple, yet still bold, tasks are the most successful and I am confident that we can make a stride in the right direction together. I welcome you all to visit my campaign website ( www.TheGreekForVeep.com) for more information about me and my vision for BCLS. Thank you very much for you support.


Kayla Tabela, Candidate for Vice President

I have been committed to making BC Law a more diverse, more tolerant, and more open place since the start of my 1L year. I could tell you how I feel about diversity. I could tell you why I think increasing the diversity of BCLS is so important. But someone once said, "actions speak louder than words." This year I have served as an e-board member of BLSA, Lambda, and the Coalition For Equality; president of the Health Law Society; and been an active supporter of all the "-ahlsas".

Next year I hope to continue my efforts as Vice President of the LSA. Appointments & Promotions Committee, the Diversity Committee, the Social Activities Committee – these committees effect our daily lives. If elected, I will work with these committees to develop discrete goals and streamline communication with the student body. The VP is in a unique position to realize change but I need your help to get there. Vote Kayla for VP.