Student Bar Association Update from President Adam Cohen
on the New Lounge, the University Presidential Spending Investigation, and More...
Last month in my first Jurist column I laid out my vision for the Student Bar Association and the law school generally, as well as enumerated a number of specific goals the SBA hoped to achieve in the year ahead.
I am proud to report that the SBA has sprinted out of the gates in the 2005-2006 academic term, and already has numerous accomplishments to its credit, including one that allows me to deliver on a campaign promise Vice President Jon Feere and I made last March and that I believe will benefit the Washington College of Law for years to come:
A New Lounge is Coming...
For too long WCL's prospective students, current students and alumni have commented on the lack of an area in which to escape the daily rigors of law school life. And visitor inquiries regarding the location of a lounge in which they can await the start of a WCL event too often have met disappointment.
Beginning this semester, this will all change. After several years of discussion between the Student Bar Association and the WCL Administration, last month I reached agreement with the Office of the Dean to jointly fund the renovation of a popular student lounge on WCL's top floor. This $50,000 capital improvement will provide students, faculty, alumni and visitors a casual, yet professional setting in which to congregate and converse amid bold leather couches, modernized tables and chairs, and two flat screen televisions.
A consistent priority year after year is the recruitment and retention of prospective students, as well as the development and cultivation of relationships with returning alumni and outside visitors. The presence of an attractive, expansive lounge area in which all of these parties can converge and discuss the law is essential if WCL is to continue to attract the best and brightest prospective law students and legal professionals that our nation has to offer. The least we can offer them in return is such an area. Now we will.
Many benefits will flow to the law school from this renovation. Current students and faculty will feel more content with their facility. Alumni will feel more at home when they return. And prospective students and other outside visitors to WCL will feel more drawn to the law school and welcomed. I am confident that the benefit of this one-time expenditure will be realized over many years. I look forward to seeing many of you in our new lounge beginning this winter.
I'd be remiss not to use this space to thank Dean Claudio Grossman and Associate Dean Khalid Khalid for their support of this important initiative. Their financial contribution allows the Student Bar Association to address this need and still maintain its fiscal strength. I cannot underestimate the importance of such stability as the SBA will remain capable of supporting programming that attracts outside visitors and brings alumni back to the law school who may later contribute to its capital campaign. Had the SBA been forced to fund this capital expense alone, it would have placed multiple future initiatives in immediate danger and several current projects would require considerable reassessment. Thankfully, through open dialogue, this will not be the case. I again thank Deans Grossman and Khalid for their willingness to support this key Student Bar Association initiative and the Association generally.
The New Mentoring Program is Here...
In addition to acting as your lead advocate of student concerns and funding programming throughout WCL, an annual Student Bar Association responsibility is facilitating the often-difficult transition to law school for our first-year students, as well as the return of upper-class students.
This August the SBA launched an improved mentoring program, which paired nearly 300 incoming first-year law students with upper class counterparts of similar interests and experiences in the hope of facilitating the often-difficult transition to law school. Behind the leadership of Laurita Denny, this year's program is more successful than any in the past. While in past years the SBA has offered this program to incoming students, the Student Bar Association never took any affirmative steps towards ensuring that mentors and mentees held initial meetings. To encourage this meeting in an informal atmosphere, this year the Student Bar Association hosted a coffee hour where mentors and mentees were invited to come introduce themselves to one another and converse. Nearly three-quarters of the first-years participating in the program attended, making this inaugural event a success.
Looking ahead, I can only hope that first-year students will find this mentoring program helpful enough that they, too, will assist their WCL classmates in the future as second- and third-year students.
The WCL Family Responds to Disaster
This September no one in the WCL family was able to turn their eyes away from the images of devastation left by Hurricane Katrina. The outpouring of support here at the Washington College of Law was heartwarming.
The SBA worked with Dean Grossman through Labor Day weekend to welcome 18 displaced New Orleans students to WCL. Dean Grossman was among the first deans nationwide to accept displaced students, and he is to be commended for his leadership in this effort.
Once ensured that the displaced students were settled into classes, the SBA turned its attention to leading the law school's hurricane relief effort, about which you can read in greater detail in a column located in this issue of the Jurist. Through active coordination, the Student Bar Association was able to lead a campaign where the law school maximized its resources and avoided duplication of effort. I feared that if the SBA did not lead the coordination of this effort, organizations would compete against themselves for donated funds. This would serve no one. While many of us are law students who cannot afford to give enormous amounts of money individually, together we can pool our funds and make a meaningful contribution to the cause. Together, we did.
I am proud to announce that we raised nearly $5,000 to benefit the victims of Hurricane Katrina - an amount that surpasses the amount of funds raised by each of Washington D.C.'s other law schools. A citywide law school bar review yielded another $1,000 for the effort as well.
I would be remiss not to recognize two student leaders in particular, who stepped forward and made this coordinated fundraising campaign a success. Selma Shelton of the Business Law Society and Lauren Bartlett of Action for Human Rights were both incredible - I cannot thank them enough for their tireless efforts, and SBA Bar Review Coordinator Tara Castillo's consistent calls to secure a venue for our bar review fundraiser deserves my gratitude as well.
Thank you to the WCL student community who showed their compassion in this time of devastation and tragedy. Through a unified effort, we were able to fight back against the feelings of utter helplessness and loss, which so many of our fellow law students and citizens felt at this time. There is still work to be done though, and just because the Student Bar Association's coordinated campaign has concluded, your generosity should not. I hope you will continue to give to this effort. If you cannot afford to do so financially, I encourage you to donate your time. Students interested in traveling down to the New Orleans region as part of this year's Alternative Spring Break should contact Office of Public Interest Director Charlene Gomes at cegomes@wcl.american.edu. Together, we can continue to make a difference. Judging by the outpouring of generosity you have shown to date, I am confident we will.
The Investigation into AU President Benjamin Ladner's Spending
As I prepare to send this on to the American Jurist for publishing, the Board of Trustees meets on main campus to decide the future of Dr. Benjamin Ladner's presidency of American University, and I will soon testify for a second time as to the law school student community's position on the matter. By the time you read this, the Board's vote will have long been concluded, and we will be on to the next step in this arduous process. And it is a process - one, I regret to say, whose handling has been unfortunate in many respects and which I will address later in this column. In this paragraph alone, I state two terms that require attention first.
First, "main campus". Throughout the investigation, I have heard many WCL students reiterate a similar refrain: "I wouldn't want to be a part of main campus right now." With our residence at 4801 Massachusetts Avenue geographically separated from main campus, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that this does not affect us here at the law school. But it does. Our status as an American University school does not permit us the luxury of claiming a separate existence and thus we must recognize the impact this investigation has. Students having job interviews over the past month can certainly attest to this. Members of the WCL Administration can report how far a shadow can be cast from main campus in their efforts to raise funds for the law school's capital campaign. Thus, the importance of my and Dean Grossman's testimony to the Board of Trustees. The Student Bar Association recognizes the impact the investigation has had on our institution. More importantly, your representative body foresees the perception that the University could create should the Board have elected to condone Dr. Ladner's spending and invite him back to a University that no longer trusted his decision-making ability. Thus the Senate passed - and I signed and presented - a resolution unanimously stating that the Washington College of Law student community possessed "no confidence" in Dr. Ladner's ability to lead our institution effectively and ethically. In what was in many respects, a historic day for the University, the Board was incredibly generous with their time and we will soon know how much weight they attribute to the student community's voice. I trust we will find it to be a lot.
The second term I feel the need to address from my first paragraph is "process." This is indeed a process, and the vote that the Board of Trustees will make on the future of Dr. Ladner's presidency is merely one step, and not the final step. It is the resolution of a single issue within the context of a larger, more complex matter. No matter the immediate decision the Board makes, there will be legal issues left to resolve over contractual interpretation, compensation, and perhaps even defamation. The Board is now dealing with an employment matter and must adhere to the protocol that such matters dictate. I urge my fellow students in the WCL community to be patient as this process continues to progress and use good judgment whenever speaking about the situation with members of the legal community outside of the WCL family.
As for the matter itself, throughout the process many Trustees on the Board have contended that Dr. Ladner's spending was scrutinized unfairly, that his spending fell within the parameters of the President's contract, and was only being considered excessive because we find ourselves in a post-Enron and Worldcom era where executives live luxurious lifestyles at the expense of their respective companies. When I testified to the Board, I expressed my willingness to give Dr. Ladner the benefit of the doubt - that spending for entertainment was permissible within his contract. But because one is permitted to do something legally should not excuse that individual from exercising good judgment in the face of rising tuition, program cuts, and limited salary increases for professors and staff. In light of these limitations on University spending, scrutiny of Dr. Ladner's expenditures was warranted. While I do not condone the manner in which all facets of this investigation were handled (featuring numerous leaks of information to the press rather than merely handling it all internally), it became increasingly obvious to me and the Student Bar Association Senate that Dr. Ladner had exercised poor judgment, possessed questionable integrity, and made his future ability to lead our institution questionable at best.
In the Month Ahead...
The Student Bar Association is continuously working to enhance the quality of student life at WCL and the overall environment in which our students study the law. But for one day at least, we're moving outside the law school and I invite you to join us for what promises to be an exciting day of golf and dinner with your WCL family, as well as a rare opportunity to have students, faculty, and alumni interact in an informal setting.
THE NINTH ANNUAL SBA GOLF CLASSIC
This year marks the ninth year the Student Bar Association has held its annual Golf Classic. I would like to personally invite you to join me and Dean Claudio Grossman, students, faculty, alumni, and guests on Friday, October 28th at the Ninth Annual Student Bar Association Golf Classic at Fort Belvoir Golf Facility. All proceeds from the event will benefit the Student Bar Association Pro Bono Community Service Awards. This year's awards will recognize students whose efforts best exemplified the spirit of service in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina through their work in the University-wide Katrina Aid and Relief Effort, or KARE.
The day will feature on-course hole-in-one contests, valuable door prizes, a delicious dinner and award presentation of the Community Service Awards, and a wonderful day of golf at one of the area's most competitive courses! And lest we not forget our annual favorites - the WCL golf jacket and free beverage cart that follows you from hole to hole!
The day promises to be an incredible one, but it cannot be a success without you! Register for the Golf Classic online at http://www.wcl.american.edu/sba/golf.
I look forward to seeing you out on the course!
Respectfully submitted,
Adam J. Cohen
President, Student Bar Association