Students, professors and administration of Syracuse University’s College of Law — in recent interviews with The Daily Orange — acknowledged a lack of diversity in the student body and faculty there, detailing a slew of wide-ranging initiatives and ideas to bolster representation at Dineen Hall.

The college is addressing concerns with multiple diversity and inclusion initiatives, including programs to introduce historically underrepresented students to the law profession at SU.

About one-quarter of students in the law school are students of color, Dean Craig Boise said in an email. And 20 percent of the school’s faculty and staff are minorities, according to data on the law school’s website.

Second year law student Saron Berhe, treasurer of SU’s Black Law Student Association, said she was not aware that the College of Law lacked diversity when she first arrived on campus. She said she thought the demographics would be similar to that of the State University of New York at Buffalo, her undergraduate alma mater.

“I remember that when we first came here, the class before us was shocked at how many of us there were that were considered diverse,” Berhe said. “Our class came in with about a dozen or so. The (College of Law) kept touting the numbers, as far as us being one of the more diverse classes.”

In a conversation with Chancellor Kent Syverud late last year, law students expressed concerns with the lack of diversity in faculty, encouraging the university to hire a more diverse set of attorneys.

Caleb Williamson, director of community service for the BLSA, said he was not surprised by the lack of diversity in the College of Law. Williamson attended Hamilton College, a private university in central New York, for his undergraduate degree, where the college’s black student population was low.

“I know this is a problem that’s nationwide, and I knew that going to a college in central New York wouldn’t help my cause,” he said. “I recognized it would be an issue.”

Boise, dean of the College of Law, said in an interview that the law school is gradually diversifying its student and faculty populations. Thirty-four percent of the Class of 2021 is made up of students of color, according to data on the school’s website. Nine percent of that class is made up of black students and 15 percent of Hispanic students, he said.

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The number of minority faculty has grown from 17 to 20 percent since 2013, Boise added. He said the College of Law hired three new faculty members this year: one Israeli man, one white woman and one Asian woman.

“When I became dean, I made diversity a preferred qualification,” Boise said. “We need to have a greater percentage of our faculty who are minorities, no doubt about it.”

The College of Law hires faculty and staff from a database of applications gathered by the Association of American Law Schools, Boise said. This year, the database had more than 400 applications for teaching positions at the 205 ABA-approved law schools in the United States, he said. The database included 30 Asian applicants, 20 Hispanic applicants and 36 black applicants, Boise said.

The best way to recruit students of color, he said, is to approach them during their undergraduate education.

The College of Law plans to begin a “Three-Plus-Three” program at three historically black colleges and universities, the dean said. This would allow students to complete three years of an undergraduate degree and three years of law school.

Students in the program would begin receiving the law education during their senior, undergraduate year. The program will be implemented at Spelman College, Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University, Boise said.

“One of the ways, if you’re interested in trying to recruit students of color, is to say, ‘Where are the students of color?’ In historically black colleges and universities,” he said. “We expect that by partnering with these schools, we’ll have access with a significant number of African American students who are interested in law school.”

During the fall semester, a forum was held for the administration to address issues of diversity brought up by students, faculty and staff, Berhe said. This led to the creation of the Inclusion Initiatives Committee, with four faculty members, four staff members and four students.

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The goal of the committee is to evaluate the climate around diversity and inclusion in the College of Law, Boise said.

“We are in a moment in time right now where there are opportunities to do better and to improve in this area that I think didn’t exist before,” Suzette Meléndez, chair of the Inclusion Initiatives Committee, said. “I always think there is room for improvement.”

Meléndez is a teaching professor and the director of the Children’s Rights and Family Law Clinic, which works with College of Law students to represent individuals of central New York who would not otherwise have legal representation.

Meléndez said that, in her classroom, she tries to illustrate how particular cases or statutes will affect people of different identities. She works to teachher students to be open to the perspectives of others when providing legal representation.

Last week, Meléndez took part in Diversity Law Day, where SU law professors spoke with local high school students to introduce them to the possibility of a career in law.

“It’s tremendously important to get students from underrepresented populations to consider law as a career and to consider our law school as a place to venture into that,” Meléndez said.

Student Bar Association President Erika Simonson said she wants to be included in diversity programming that SU has to offer, and wants to improve communication between the College of Law and the rest of the university.

“I think the law school and the larger university could do a better job of coming together, so that way law students and law professors have the opportunity to take part in these initiatives,” she said. “We don’t want to reinvent the wheel just for the law school.”

Williamson said an effective way to recruit diverse individuals is to allow current students to communicate with them about their experiences.

He said he knew students who attended the law school before he decided to enroll. Learning about their personal educational experiences helped him make his decision, Williamson said.

“In terms of actually getting accepted students to choose Syracuse, the personal narratives of the current students can be beneficial,” he said.

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When two black men were arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks cafe in April 2018, Williamson said he felt a sense of solidarity and understanding. He also experienced this kind of harassment, he said, having to show proof of purchase in order to justify being in restaurants.

“Seeing that on the news, it brought me back,” he said.

After the Starbucks incident, Paula Johnson, one of his professors, told Williamson’s class to reach out and talk to her if they felt struck by the incident. She was the only black woman law professor Williamson had been taught by.

Williamson said that his professor, reaching out to the students regarding the event, made a major difference in his opinion of the faculty and administration. But he added that professors like her are uncommon.

Berhe said the College of Law administration could better serve the student body by outwardly showing they are working toward creating a diverse environment and making sure students“feel the diversity.”

“In order to have people that are attracted to coming here you need to have a place that people say is diverse,” Berhe said. “A person’s personal experience at a place are as important as the education they receive.”

Published on February 10, 2019 at 11:24 pm

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