Christina Luk ‘21
Executive Editor
UVA Law’s Diversity Week is coming up on its thirteenth year. Each year, the Law School comes together to affirm our shared commitment to diversity and inclusion and to pledge that prejudice has no place in our community. Diversity Week celebrates diversity with a week of fun events including the Diversity Kick-Off on Monday, an interactive photobooth, a movie screening (Honeyland), a cultural game night, and a panel to discuss Diversity in Big Law with attorneys from top firms.
The origins of Diversity Week start with a “diversity sensitivity campaign” organized by Lambda’s vice-president, Robin Cook ’07, in response to an incident of intolerance. On September 24, 2006, two second-year law students were attacked at Foxfield by a fellow law student for being gay. The attacker asked them if they were gay, if they would prove it by kissing, and, when one kissed the other on the cheek, the attacker threw his drink at one student and called both of them “fags.”[1]
Within the week, a Letter to the Editor had been published in the Law Weekly, penned by the executive members of The Lambda Law Alliance and signed by twenty-one professors and 122 students. The Letter reported that the student who slurred and attacked the couple at Foxfield had apologized and applauded the “overwhelming and immediate support” the student body showed.[2] The Letter went on, though, to make a powerful insight that “neither the gay community here at the Law School, nor the larger community of minority students, can take this comfort for granted. Indeed, we must be ever-vigilant to assure that those who follow in our footsteps will benefit from the same levels of openness and tolerance we enjoy.”[3]
It is to that end that Diversity Week came about and it is to that end now that we would like to share the following student comments on diversity at the Law School:
Jess Feinberg ‘21
Guest Writer
I walk around the Law School with a quiet hum of awareness in the back of my mind that the masculine way I dress marks me as different. Usually, it’s nothing more than that hum, but there are times when I become very conscious that I am being looked at, and as someone who has dealt with body image issues for my whole life, that is an intensely uncomfortable experience. For events like Barrister’s, dressing in a way that makes me feel comfortable with my gender is mutually exclusive to being able to blend in. Despite how much I’d like to, because the FOMO is truly terrible, the thought of being that visible and that different is scary and stressful enough that I’m not even going to Barrister’s this year.
Leah Deskins ‘21
Staff Editor
I think I was first exposed to the idea of “diversity” being a good thing sometime in college. I had grown up in a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, fairly cookie cutter, middle-class, very white suburban area in Southeastern Virginia. “Diversity” was decidedly not a thing there. But when I started college, I found myself surrounded by people from across the state and country, from all kinds of different backgrounds, and whose approaches to life were so different from mine. It was a fascinating, whole new world.[1]
I’ll skip ahead a little bit: At some point during college, I learned that “diversity” was a good thing. But at the same time, while I knew it had benefits for other people, I felt like I never saw its effects or that it never really affected me. I assumed that whatever the benefits were, they were just beyond my comprehension.
That was my mindset throughout college, and it continued after I graduated. What was wrong with me? I knew diversity could be really valuable, but I felt fake supporting it without really understanding how it worked. And I felt extra guilty because I thought that, because of my own background, I should have been able to appreciate how bringing something slightly different to the table could yield positive benefits. Yes, I had come from a very white, cookie-cutter, definitely-not-diverse area, so maybe I was a little stunted in my ability to really understand the value of diversity, but I had also grown up as part of a very small Jewish community among a sea of Methodists, Catholics, and Baptists, among other Christian denominations. I was often the only connection my friends and classmates had to Judaism. I was an oddball at home. Why couldn’t I figure this “diversity” thing out? Little did I know, part of the problem was that I thought the effects of diversity would always be obvious.
Taking Dean Goluboff’s Con Law class last spring (rather, being automatically enrolled in it as a member of Section A) changed my understanding of the value of diversity.[2] I had never had a Jewish, female, similar-career-field-as-me teacher or role model.[3] I distinctly remember that there was something special about when she asked the class to verbally list the Commerce Clause cases we had discussed and then remarked that it reminded her of the recitation of the ten plagues at a Passover Seder. It made my classroom experience feel a little less sterile. I had the opportunity to learn from someone like me. For maybe the first time, I experienced for myself how being able to relate to someone else because you share something that makes you, perhaps, a little different can have beneficial effects. It wasn’t a huge effect for me, admittedly—I still don’t really understand or love constitutional law (I’m more of a rules girl). But, it mattered, and I felt slightly more engaged in the class knowing that I could relate to a professor in a way I couldn’t relate to many other professors or role models.[4]
The benefits of diversity don’t have to be so obvious that they slap you in the face. And society shouldn’t portray them as such. They can be subtle, and that’s okay. Nor do you need a grandiose experience with the value of diversity to feel its effects. It can make a difference even on a smaller scale.
[1] I remember being shocked that so many people had the guts to wear “Obama” apparel (it was the fall of 2012, right before his reelection) around campus. Little did I know, there is a mysterious realm out there known as “Northern Virginia” that breeds Democrats. Maybe it comes from something in the Potomac River? Maybe eating at that Russian/Uzbek, Rus Uz, restaurant on the corner of Fairfax Avenue and North Randolph Street in Arlington makes people a little more inclined to vote for left-leaning politicians? I don’t know.
[2] No, I’m not talking about Grutter v. Bollinger or Gratz v. Bollinger.
[3] I am DEFINITELY no Dean Goluboff and could not aspire to come even remotely close to achieving her level of academic or personal “coolness,” but she is an accomplished, smart, and spunky person, and there is a lot to admire about that.
[4] I have since looked back at my college days and wondered why I hadn’t had this experience sooner, maybe with a female professor. Then, I realized that all but two of my college professors had been men. *facepalm* Case in point.
Melina Sonis ‘20, LL.M.
Guest Writer
"What does diversity mean to you?" After considering the question, I have found that there is no clear answer to this question. For each individual person, diversity means something different in the various situations of life. As a student, I want to learn from professors with different backgrounds. I would like to be trained to become a person who does not think in a biased way, but rather someone thinks diversely and asks questions critically. I want to debate and discuss various controversial topics, especially with people who do not share my opinion. As a woman, I want to be judged independently of my gender, only by my own performance. I want to have the same educational and promotional opportunities as people of other genders. As an LLM student, I wish to learn more about the different cultures and ethnic backgrounds of my fellow students. I would like to take the opportunity in this international environment to learn how lawyers from other countries think and work and thereby broaden my own perspective on law. As a German, it is important to me that we always remember that diversity means freedom and that this is one of our most important values. Last but not least, as a human being, I want to be treated independently of my origin, my appearance, my sex, and my cultural and religious background, but only on the basis of my own individual personality.
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