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2.6_Social Justice Series: Jenise Rivera, RLAW'21; Kayvon Paul, RLAW'23; and Morgan Humphrey, RLAW'21
17 Plays4 years ago
In a special Social Justice Series, Co-Dean Kim Mutcherson talks with current Social Justice Scholars Jenise Rivera, RLAW'21; Kayvon Paul, RLAW'23; and Morgan Humphrey, RLAW'21 about criminal justice reform and how Rutgers Law School can be a better community advocate.
Learn more about the Social Justice Scholars Program!
The Power of Attorney is produced by Rutgers Law School. With two locations minutes from Philadelphia and New York City, Rutgers Law offers the prestige and reputation of a large, nationally-known university combined with a personal, small campus experience. Learn more by visiting law.rutgers.edu.
Series Producer and Editor: Kate Bianco
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rutgerslaw/messageRecommended
Transcript
Introduction and Participant Overview
00:00:09
Speaker
My name is Kim Mutterson. I am the co-dean of Rutgers Law School on the Camden campus. And this is the power of attorney. Today, I get to do a podcast with three of our law students. So I'm looking forward to an interesting and engaging conversation with these folks. And I'm actually going to let them introduce themselves before we get started. So Janice, do you want to start? Just tell us your name and what year you are at the law school.
00:00:39
Speaker
Absolutely. Thank you, Dean Mutcherson, for having me today. I am Janice Rivera, and I'm a 3L at Rutgers Camden Hall. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Kayvon? Good morning. Thank you, Dean Mutcherson, for having myself along with the other two guests today. My name is Kayvon Paul. I'm a second year part-time student at Rutgers Law School. Awesome. Thank you, Kayvon. And then Morgan, last but not least,
00:01:06
Speaker
Hi, thank you Dean Munchison for having us all on. I'm excited, all these students are great, and I'm excited to be speaking with all of you this morning. I am a third year law student, full time student.
00:01:18
Speaker
Excellent. Thank you all.
Motivations for Pursuing Law
00:01:21
Speaker
So the way that I like to start these podcasts, just so I can get a sense of what brings us all together, is I ask people for their origin story, which is a nod to my love for superhero movies. So let's see, I think we'll start with Morgan. So what's your origin story, right? Of all of the things that you could have decided to do with your life, Morgan, you decided
00:01:42
Speaker
to come to law school and, and to be a lawyer. So why? I originally went to undergrad for business school and wow, my undergrad was great. I realized my heart was not in business and I took legal ethics classes and legal ethics and business classes. And I became very interested in like the law and how to relate it to business and everything. Then from then I started getting more interested in the law. I accepted jobs.
00:02:08
Speaker
in the law. So I worked for the prosecutor's office in Mercer County and for the Philadelphia district attorney's office, interned at the National Constitution Center and really just emerged some emergence of in law. And then when I lived in Los Angeles, I worked for a public policy organization that worked on
00:02:26
Speaker
ending the war on drugs and the criminalization of drugs use. And it was in that work and especially in the criminal justice reform work that I really found that my passion was for the law and that I wanted to go to law school and really go in combat the negative impacts of our criminal justice system. So I chose to come to law school, chose to come to Rutgers because Jersey is home and Rutgers is New Jersey when it comes to schools. And yeah, so that's what brought me here.
Expectations vs Reality in Law School
00:02:55
Speaker
Excellent. Well, we are definitely going to get into some conversations about criminal justice reform before we end our time together today. So I'll be coming back to you for those. Kayvonne, how about you? What's your origin story? Where are you in law school?
00:03:08
Speaker
Thank you for the question. So I grew up in Long Branch, Asbury Park area. Both of those areas were really bad school districts. I think they're like bottom five. But I'm a first generation college student. I didn't plan on going to college. And then one of my teachers, AP History, I guess he saw something in me. And he was also a professor at Moms University, which was a couple of steps away from our high school. And he told me to apply through their ELF program. So I did that, got accepted.
00:03:38
Speaker
and actually took one of his classes the following semester. But I started off at Monmouth University as a social work major. I wanted to help people, but I soon realized that that was a tough job and that that was pretty much micro oriented and focusing on the individual.
00:03:57
Speaker
So then I switched gears my second, third year to political science. I thought that was good as it helped people in a macro sense, like macro oriented on a larger scale. And then through that, I worked on various political campaigns throughout Monmouth. And then before I graduated backtracking, I didn't know what I wanted to do and I didn't have a job lined up.
00:04:19
Speaker
So I just figured the law would be that the next logical progression. But after graduating, I landed a job at a lobbying shop in New Jersey. And now I'm here, I decided to go part time and hopefully get back to the community in some way. Something that I did find interesting is intellectual property. So somehow bridging that and using that to help other minority businesses and stuff of that nature. So that's where I'm at now.
00:04:46
Speaker
Excellent.
Impact of COVID-19 on Law School Experience
00:04:47
Speaker
Thank you. And Janice, how about you? Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up in Camden, New Jersey, so not too far away from the law school. And growing up, I always had this advocate personality type. It was actually a running joke in my family that I should be a lawyer. And growing up, I didn't really see any lawyers. I didn't know any lawyers. So when I entered into college, I was actually very discouraged from pursuing that career path
00:05:16
Speaker
because it just seemed like students from my city just didn't do those things. We didn't become lawyers. So I actually entered into Rutgers Camden undergrad as a psychology major. And I did that for two years and then I took a criminal justice class. And in that criminal justice class, my professor had gone to law school and we started discussing
00:05:42
Speaker
uh, law school and kind of advocating for people and things like that. And that's where I really decided that it didn't matter how hard it was. It didn't matter that I didn't see any lawyers around me. I was going to become a lawyer. Um, because at the end of the day, that's really what I wanted to do. I wanted to advocate. And I just had such a strong background for being an advocate coming from my mom, who was always an advocate for everyone in our community.
00:06:08
Speaker
So that's what really drove me to attend law school. And I Googled it. I figured out how to take the LSAT and here I am. I love it. I actually want to jump back to something that you mentioned, Kayvon, which is that you're a first gen student here at the law school. And there are a number of people who come to Rutgers Law who are in the same position. And I'm curious about
00:06:33
Speaker
what you imagined law school was going to be like, and then I'm going to ask you the same questions to Morgan and Janice as well, so be ready for that. What did you imagine that law school was going to be like, and in what ways has it lived up to or lived down to, depending what your imagination told you about law school?
00:06:56
Speaker
I mean, I didn't really have any expectations coming into law school. I just took it as for what I was. But I know there's a, I'm an evening student. So I know there's a difference between the evening program and the full-time program in terms of the level of, I guess for lack of a better word, competition. I guess, I mean, my cohort, we're all like easy going. We're more like family oriented. If one person struggles, we help each other out.
00:07:24
Speaker
Everyone has like their other responsibilities. They have families when also we we try our best to lift everyone up and
00:07:31
Speaker
be there for one another. It was definitely challenging and it was definitely a shock in a way because I wasn't prepared for the amount of work and the way the law school worked. So I mean, I don't really, I'm sorry, I don't have a better answer, but I mean, I didn't come in with any preconception of like what law school was. I just did what I had to do and kept pushing.
00:07:57
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think that that's not a bad answer at all. I think that's a great answer. And I think it sort of, you know, we get such a range of students and some folks come to us and they have lawyers upon lawyers in their families and they come in with very clear vision of what they think law school is going to be like. And then lots of people come in and are just, you know, waiting to see what we're going to offer up to them. So I think both of those are positions that people find themselves in.
00:08:22
Speaker
I think it's nice for people to know that you can be one of those people who comes in not knowing what to expect and can absolutely make it work. What about you, Morgan? What was your sort of vision of what law school was going to be like and kind of what the things were you going to be learning? And then how has this experience lived up to that?
00:08:38
Speaker
I was blessed by, like all of my jobs were, since all of my jobs were in the legal profession prior to law school, I had the opportunity to talk with a lot of lawyers about law school and what the experience is going to be like. And they generally told me it's going to be a lot of reading. It's going to be a lot of work and a lot of reading, which was helpful because it is a lot of work and a lot of reading. So like that helps with
00:09:03
Speaker
preparing me for the workload of law school in terms of mentally preparing for it. However, I'm not a first-generation college student, but I am a first-generation law student and I didn't know any lawyers personally growing up and everything. One of the things that I learned in law school is really how
00:09:25
Speaker
much of an impact institutional law, which plays into your success in law school and things that just you know, just you would learn just from having lawyers that you can frequently engage with and like can tell you like, you know, oh, your first year grades are most important because it generally sucks your career path and things of that nature that you don't know if you don't know any attorneys and you don't find out you
00:09:49
Speaker
you find out the hard way in law school if you don't have anyone else to go and talk to or someone else to go and advise you and help you like explain what journal and what write on is, what moot court is and all of these things. So while I was, you know, I did have the correct expectation for the workload, there were still things that I just didn't know just because of the lack of institutional knowledge that comes from not having any family members who are attorneys and not, you know, knowing the legal profession because you know people intimately who've done it.
00:10:19
Speaker
Absolutely. That is such a terrific point. And I think it's one of those things where when people make the assumption that everybody's starting from the same starting line, that's a way in which folks end up being left behind, right? Because they don't know all of these things that sometimes can be incredibly subtle as well. And so, yeah, that is one of the pieces of the puzzle. I think that can be really tough when you start law school.
Influence of Current Events on Personal and Academic Life
00:10:45
Speaker
What about you, Janice?
00:10:46
Speaker
So it's so interesting that you asked this question because May Kay Vonn were actually just talking about this the other day, but I have to agree with Morgan on everything she said, because it's so true. There's so many things that you just don't know as a first-generation law student. So I didn't know any lawyers, so there was no one I could have asked. So I started seeking out lawyers and trying to get this information on what law school was going to be like. And everyone said it's going to be hard.
00:11:15
Speaker
there's a lot of work, there's a lot of reading, but it was a really high level look at what law school is. And what was really surprising to me was that nobody explained how emotionally and mentally taxing law school would be. And I think that is something that I was not prepared for coming in. I just wasn't prepared for the like the long nights and the doubting yourself and all those mental aspects behind
00:11:45
Speaker
law school. So that's something that just hit really hard as well as just the culture shock. Like I, I experienced such a big culture shock coming into law school. Like I said, I had went to Rutgers Camden undergrad and there's just certain things that you didn't hear and you didn't experience in the undergrad that I experienced in the law school. And I just wasn't prepared to handle it because I wasn't anticipating handling those types of situations.
00:12:13
Speaker
Can you, can you give me an, I mean, I can sort of imagine, but can you give me an example? Absolutely. It's just some of the, you know, everyone comes from different backgrounds in law school and there's sometimes, you know, certain beliefs and certain insensitivities that are thrown out, for example, in the middle of class. And you're one of the only diverse, you know, minority students sitting in the classroom and people start to look at you or,
00:12:43
Speaker
you're looked at to answer for your entire background. And that is something that I wasn't anticipating doing. And it just kind of felt like an awkward situation at some point. Yeah. And thank you for sharing that. And I think it's one of those things where people don't always realize what the extra layers are, particularly for whether it's first gen students or students of color or
00:13:13
Speaker
students, you know, across a range of different, um, identity categories, you know, being in this space where you're one of very few. And if you're in a law school classroom, there are going to be conversations that are really tough conversations, whether they're conversations about race or gender or class or all these other sorts of things and figuring out how do you navigate that as a student in the classroom. And also frankly, you know, a lot of faculty who aren't necessarily comfortable navigating that from their, from their side of the podium. So.
00:13:42
Speaker
I definitely I definitely hear you on that. I wanted to talk also about what it has been like being a law student over the last several months, because for everybody, the last several months have been incredibly disruptive, you know, we sort of
00:13:57
Speaker
pushed everybody off campus in March, and we haven't really been back since, but also just we're living in this time of this public health calamity of continued violence against Black communities in particular, particularly police violence. And then we have a political system that seems to be in
00:14:19
Speaker
a level of disarray at this point as we head into the next presidential election. So I imagine whatever is difficult about law school has been compounded over the last several months. So I wonder, I'm going to ask you, Morgan, to start this one off. Could you talk a little bit about what it has been like being somebody in law school over the last few months? Sure. It has been difficult to say the least. And part of it
00:14:44
Speaker
is COVID obviously and for me personally and I can imagine other law students and other people, COVID has had a tremendous impact on our lives and especially financially. I lost my job when COVID hit because I worked part-time as a bartender to help pay for law school and
00:15:04
Speaker
obviously, when all the restaurants shut down, that meant so did my job. And even now that they're open, because of the how my restaurant is set up, and that's only indoor and everything. And because of personal reasons, I know many people who have died from COVID, I was not able to return to work. So I'm still, even though the job is there for me, I don't feel
00:15:26
Speaker
comfortable and safe returning to work. So I've been friendlessly impacted. Like the fact that because of COVID and because the law school is, once it cares about its students, we are remote to protect all of our safety, which I'm very happy for and very thankful for. But at the same time, that also means we don't get the personal interactions. We don't get to see our classmates and have conversations, you know,
00:15:51
Speaker
between classes about the course material or just about, you know, life. And so that socialization has been very, you know, had a negative impact. And then we compound that with all these issues when it comes to police brutality and race in the country. It just feels very isolating right now. And I personally have had to take mental health days, especially after the Breonna Taylor decision.
00:16:14
Speaker
because it was very hard to focus and think about what I was learning in class when I'm sitting there faced with the reality that this black woman who was a paramedic, you know, worked to save people's lives every day, her life was taken and it seems as if the government does not care. And I myself felt very vulnerable in that because I'm like, I definitely could be a Breonna Taylor. And that's just a really,
00:16:42
Speaker
hard thing to come to terms with, especially when you're working to be a part of this legal system, the same legal system that is not going to protect you, or you don't feel is going to protect you.
00:16:53
Speaker
Right. A hundred percent. First off, so sorry that, um, that you've lost people to COVID. I'm so sorry to hear about that. And I know that this has been so impactful for, you know, everyone really, not just in this country, but around the globe. And then, you know, I obviously hear you on Brianna Taylor. And I do want us to get into a conversation about.
00:17:15
Speaker
I think what you said was really profound when you're somebody who's working to be a part of this system and then watching how this system treats people who look like you and me, right? It can be very hard to handle. So I want to put a little bit of a bookmark there because we're definitely going to come back to that conversation. But I want to give Kayvon and Janice an opportunity to also talk about what these last several months have been like for the two of you. So Kayvon, do you want to go first?
00:17:41
Speaker
Sure. Thank you for the question. I mean, the last couple of months have been tough. A lot of the points of Morgan stress, I mean, that the mental health is very important and I think students need to take, remember to take time for themselves because I mean, being in quarantine, if you're still practicing like the quarantine measures and the social distancing, it definitely takes a toll, especially if you have to work either part time or full time and then you're remote working and then
00:18:07
Speaker
there's really no separation between life and work and school. So you might find yourself, if you don't take any breaks, just grinding from eight o'clock in the morning to nine o'clock at night, and you won't even remember to take care of yourself.
00:18:21
Speaker
So that's super important for people just to be aware of and to exercise that mental health because that's super important. In terms of the virtual learning, I mean it's definitely tough because it doesn't work for everyone's learning style.
00:18:37
Speaker
For myself, I'm a visual learner. So I need to be like in the classroom. And like when professors use like diagrams and stuff on the board, that helps a lot. So like just like looking at a professor on a screen is super tough. And then you're trying to navigate like your notes and split screen. And then you have like all the commotion from other people's screens. It's just like a mess. And I know everyone is going to be affected by that. Janice. Dean Matcherson, these past couple months have been
00:19:07
Speaker
a roller coaster, to say the least. I have to agree with Morgan and Kayvon. There are really three huge things that are generally just going on, at least for me personally. It's like we have the world kind of spiraling. We have class and focusing on becoming attorneys. And then we have family things that are going on as either a direct result of COVID or just bad luck from 2020.
00:19:38
Speaker
So really, I feel like a lot right now, a lot of students are in this weird balancing act between feeling like the system that they're trying to join is just so broken. There's no hope versus watching everything that's happening in the administration and happening with the election and using that to feel their desire to do something. So there's this big balance between.
00:20:06
Speaker
Are my classes and what I'm doing even worth it? Is it even relevant? Versus I need this foundation, this background in order to do all the things that I want to do to help or fix some of these systems. So I think that's something that a lot of people are struggling with. I know that's something that I was struggling with for a little bit. The virtual learning has its own difficulties. I know students who have kids, students who
00:20:34
Speaker
don't have the space or the quiet space to be able to sit down and do their classes. And that's just something that's really hard. And some students just need a library to sit in, like me, in order to really focus on their work. And we just don't have that right now. So it's quite difficult doing the remote learning, although I am thankful for it as well because I don't want to risk my health going into class. And then family things, there's quite a bit of
00:21:03
Speaker
stress, stressors on the families right now between COVID loss of jobs and things like that, that I think everybody's trying to deal with. That's makes law school just a little more harder. Yeah, absolutely. And I also, you know, the other thing that I think, and you all, all sort of alluded to this is, you know, everybody is not similarly situated.
Rutgers Law's Role in Camden and Diversity Support
00:21:23
Speaker
So, you know, I'm doing this from my dining room table while my two kids are, while I'm purportedly homeschooling my two kids, right?
00:21:31
Speaker
which basically means walking into their rooms every, you know, hour or so and saying, what are you supposed to be doing right now? But, you know, some people as Morgan pointed out are there's significant financial hits that people are taking. Some people have had lots of sick people in their families. Some people, as Kayvon was pointing out, have a lot of difficulty learning in, in the zoom environment. So it's hard to figure out how do you.
00:21:54
Speaker
get everybody on equal footing when their circumstances are so, so very different. But I want to dig deeper into something that both Janice and Morgan brought up, which is, you're in law school and you're watching, it often feels like the world is just sort of burning.
00:22:14
Speaker
Around us and you know, literally in the California sense earlier this summer or so, you know What are the what are the things that you that you say to yourself? I'm gonna go back to Morgan on this one What are the things that you say to yourself when you look at?
00:22:28
Speaker
In particular, the failures of our criminal justice system, which is a system that you're interested in being a part of in a very particular way, how do you motivate yourself? How do you make yourself feel like, all right, this is going to be worth it in the end? For me, personally, I try to remind myself of why I'm doing this.
00:22:54
Speaker
And especially when it seems hopeless, because I also have to remember that like, Black people overcome way more. People in this country have overcome so much. There was a time when the abolition of slavery seemed hopeless and that there was no point. And if it weren't for people continuing to try and push for even when it was unpopular, even when it seemed like that's crazy, how could we ever have a society where we didn't have
00:23:18
Speaker
black people who were enslaved, they didn't go and sit there and say, okay, this is hopeless. They kept fighting. And it was that continued fight that brought about the end of slavery. And the same thing for the civil rights movement, similarly for labor movements and just different movements within this country. And having to recognize that these different social movements are connected and
00:23:43
Speaker
our generation what we are living through is just a continuation of the fight and the only way to go and reach the end result is if we keep fighting. That gets me motivated so I'll put on some documentaries about Angela Davis or the Black Panthers or something to go and remind me that this while this is mentally tolling and emotionally tolling it is also something that we all have been built for in terms of we've seen it done in the past we've seen people go and fight for these things so so can we.
00:24:12
Speaker
Absolutely. Janice, what about you? How do you keep yourself moving forward when there's all of this stuff going on that potentially suggests that law isn't always the answer? I always keep in mind that advocate drive that I had coming into law school, that I still have, that fueled my desire to come to law school. If we don't stand up now, if we don't join the fight now, we're doing a disservice.
00:24:42
Speaker
We as lawyers have a special unique skill set. We have certain doors that are open to us. They're not open to everyone else. And we need to use those to be an asset to the team. Without a team, we're not going anywhere. And that's how I think about it. I'm becoming an asset to a team that's going to stand up for what is right. So even if we're not the entire system, there's still a team that
00:25:11
Speaker
is going to fight for the correct things in that system. And that's what I think about when I get down. Yeah.
00:25:21
Speaker
So we are bumping up on the presidential election, or I should say we're in the election, right? Because people are already voting. And if you're anything like me, you have a little bit of maybe a lot of nervousness about what's going to happen on November 3rd and then after. But I want to think about, you know, a lot of the conversation that folks have been having over the summer, as there have been, you know, protest movements and
00:25:50
Speaker
these much broader conversations about things like defunding the police, whatever that means to you in the context in which it's being used, or really important conversations about public health. And we're having all of these conversations now.
00:26:07
Speaker
lots of people over the summer were saying, this feels different. This moment feels different. It feels like there's really something that we can capture here. So I'm gonna start with Kayvon on this one. Do you feel like there's something special in this moment that we're sitting in right now that there's a sort of possibility here? And if so, what do you think we need to do in order to take advantage of that possibility?
00:26:34
Speaker
Thank you for the question. So, I mean, I think right now in history, it's a super important moment. I'm a strong proponent of social movements and what they accomplish. So, I mean, with everything going on with the Black Lives Matter movement, it's super important and we have to capitalize on the social movement and all of the progress that we're making. I mean, prior to all the uprisings and similar events of that nature, I mean,
00:27:02
Speaker
There was little discussion on the funding, the police, and now it's in everyone's face. So I think we just have to keep at it and channel that energy into public policy change. So we see in different cities around the country where larger cities are producing ordinances and passing other pieces of legislation to actually reallocate funding toward social welfare services and programs for their citizens.
00:27:28
Speaker
And I think as lawyers we have the opportunity to sit at the table and have a seat at the table and in a unique position as we're all come from different marginalized backgrounds historically. Just having a seat at the table as an attorney where we have
00:27:48
Speaker
and understanding of the law and how it works and how we can use it to promote our public policy objectives, whether it be defunding the police or abolishing for-profit prisons. I mean, we're in a unique position, an important position, and we have to use our skill set to capitalize on the social movements and promote the public policy that we need. Definitely. So Morgan, I have a question that I've been thinking about specifically.
00:28:15
Speaker
for you because you've identified yourself as somebody who's interested in criminal justice and in that world. One of the things that I think was striking for a lot of folks after the grand jury announcement in the Breonna Taylor case
00:28:33
Speaker
is that, you know, the Kentucky AG is a black man and he's a black man who is a part of the system that decided that the officers who killed Breonna Taylor were not going to face criminal indictment. And so that, you know, again pushes me back to this question of what does it mean to be a part of the system? And is it a system that to the extent you think it needs to be reformed,
00:28:59
Speaker
that that can be done from within the system. And I know that this is a really tough question, but, you know, how do you see the role of reformers, of legal reformers, right, of lawyers who are fighting for reform, who are actually a part of the criminal justice system, whether they're public defenders or, you know, in the world we live in now, you know, we've got these progressive prosecutors. What's the role that you and other lawyers like you who are progressive, who end up in the criminal justice system,
00:29:28
Speaker
should be playing to make that system better or dismantle it? Thank you for the question. When I think about whether or not it's possible to change the system from within, I think back to my experience in the criminal justice system in terms of working for the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office and also working at the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office.
00:29:54
Speaker
And especially at my time at the district attorney's office where I worked prosecuting traffic citations. Now these were non-incarceration offenses that, you know, these are just your simple running a stop sign and get a ticket and some points and pay a fine. But even in that situation, I found myself that it was hard not to succumb to the system to a certain extent.
00:30:19
Speaker
Because especially in that position, we're dealing with people who are angry and the only people they have to take the anger out are on you. And that becomes very draining to go day in and day out and have people angry at you and yelling at you for something that you had nothing to do with. Um, and then when I worked at the Mercer County prosecutor's office, I worked in the victim witness division. So I worked with victims. And so that also, you know, makes it hard because you're seeing people who have been harmed in
00:30:46
Speaker
It's hard for you not to look at the people who are accused of committing these harms as, you know, do not look at them as bad people and to like disregard or not take into account the situation or the predicament that might put them in that situation, especially because I was working in the juvenile division. So we're dealing with kids who are, you know, fighting their teachers and, you know, have hurt their older teacher. And, you know, but it became hard to think about, well, what that child may be going through.
00:31:15
Speaker
you know, at home, what trauma they may be dealing with and everything that might contribute to their actions. So for me, because of and I recognize as a personal experience, I don't see, I feel like the system will change you before you change it. And it's because when we think about especially when you think about like racism, and like it is systemic, it's just not about individual interactions. And that's what people think. So that's why people think that
00:31:39
Speaker
If you just put more officers of color on the force, it'll change. Ignores the fact that it's not about the individual. It's not about whether each individual officer actually is a bigot and actually harbors racial intention when the system is designed to go and disproportionately negatively impact and over police and criminalize and incarcerate.
00:32:01
Speaker
specific groups of population based off of race or based off of socioeconomic status. Because it's not an individual thing, I find it hard for individuals to go and change it. However, we still have to think about the short term and the long term. In the short term, this is the system we have. While we have it, I do feel we need people in there who are trying to go and minimize
00:32:26
Speaker
and mitigate the harms of the system. And we certainly need public defenders while there is this system in place. However, I do feel that, like there was a mantra that we had in our, in my organization, the Drug Policy Alliance, like we want our job to become obsolete. We want there to be no more need for an organization to end the war on drugs, because the war on drugs, we want the war on drugs to be ended. So I think it's like, you know, recognize short term, those reform, reformers, prosecutors are great, but also recognizing that it's about
00:32:56
Speaker
the system and individuals aren't going to change the system necessarily. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, what I like so much about your answer is I think that there are a lot of folks who are still struggling to understand, you know, what is systemic racism? And as you say, you're being focused on individual acts and individual people.
00:33:16
Speaker
sort of loses sight of the larger issue, which is that we have structures that have been in place for decades, for centuries, that have a disparate impact, particularly on communities of color and Black communities. And so it's not just about, you know, training a cohort of police officers in de-escalation, right? It's a deeper issue than that.
00:33:38
Speaker
Janice, I wanted to actually jump back to you with a sort of similar set of questions. And I want to ask you because there aren't a lot of students at the law school who are from Camden, who grew up in Camden, who have family in Camden. And one of the things that I think we're constantly thinking about is
00:33:59
Speaker
You know, what is the role that we as an institution, right? As the campus, what are our obligations to the city of Camden? And what can we do in the city of, of Camden, which is a city that, you know, struggles in significant ways. And in particular, I wonder if you can talk a little bit about, you know, the ways in which you think the law school can be a part of, of, of Camden success or ways that we have failed to be a part of Camden success.
00:34:30
Speaker
I'm so happy that you asked this question because it's something that even in undergrad, we had talked about with some professors that were a little more open and honest with us. The Rutgers campus has done both harm and good in certain senses. So we can start with stopping eminent domain takeovers.
00:34:54
Speaker
that is something that has affected so many people in the Camden area, especially where the law school is, where individuals are getting pushed out of their homes, getting paid, you know, very minimal market price for their homes, so Rutgers can expand their campus. There's a bit of gentrification going on, if I'm going to be honest. And it's really hard on the individuals that live in Camden
00:35:21
Speaker
Additionally, it's not just Rutgers. There are a bunch of other actors in the city who are taking these huge tax deals and saying that they're going to provide jobs for individuals in the cities and then disqualify them because they have a criminal record or disqualify them because they don't have the education, which is very misleading to the population and it's not necessarily fair. There are
00:35:50
Speaker
certain good things. For example, when I was leaving Rutgers Camden, when I was graduating, they were starting a bridge to gap program, which kind of covers, you know, the expense takes some of that expense off of the students to attend. But that's one small contribution. And there are a lot of Camden students that go to Rutgers Camden undergrad, but we don't see those numbers come over to the law school.
00:36:18
Speaker
We don't see those numbers always translate to graduate programs. And there are certain things that I feel that Rutgers could communicate better in the undergrad about these programs because what a lot of the gap between I know students, for example, that came from my high school.
00:36:37
Speaker
And to Rutgers is we just didn't know, right? So we didn't know what the LSAT was. We didn't know how to apply to these programs. We didn't know if we were able or capable enough to do these things. And Rutgers never felt the need to ever educate us about that. And that's something that if you're not going to Google it, if you're not going to research it, if you don't know where to start to Google and research these things, then it's much less likely that
00:37:06
Speaker
a minority student or a student of a different background will move into these graduate programs. So Rutgers has a lot of, a lot of internal things to fix. Some of it regarding guidance, some of it regarding financial aid, some of it regarding classes and availability and things like that for students. But as far as the overall population and as far as what Rutgers law could do for it, I understand it's hard because
00:37:34
Speaker
We are Rutgers law, we are part of Rutgers, but looking at the city objectively and what's happening to the community and what Rutgers is doing and advocating for the city and advocating for the population that is being pushed out of downtown Camden that is, you know, affected by what Rutgers is doing is something that I think us as lawyers in the law school could bring to the table that we have that seed at.
00:38:00
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I think, you know, that's a, that's a sort of ongoing challenge whenever you have a college or a university in, in neighborhoods. Right. Um, how do you interact and how do you figure out how to be a, you know, a force for good in the community that you live in? And I, and I know that the campus cares about these issues a lot and the chancellors have cared about these issues a lot, but you know, we can always do better.
Future Aspirations and Desired Improvements at Rutgers
00:38:26
Speaker
Can I just add something too? Please do. That's super important that.
00:38:30
Speaker
I feel needs to be said. Rutgers needs to do a better job supporting their diverse students and minority students because that's something that's huge in retention rates. That's something that's huge in the confidence of being able to finish college or even go to law school or finish law school is that support that the students have and it's lacking. Yeah.
00:38:52
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think that that's, you know, I obviously I don't disagree with that at all. And, you know, one of the things that I think is so challenging is, you know, when I listen to students of color and the concerns that they raise and the feelings that folks have, you know, they're the same concerns and feelings that I had when I was in law school, you know, a couple of decades ago.
00:39:15
Speaker
And so it is, it's really difficult to figure out like, why are we not doing better? And what are the things that we could be doing better? And part of that, I think is something that, I don't know if it was Eugeniece or Morgan who alluded to this earlier, but you know, bringing, we, you know, we bring together people who come from such a wide range of experiences and trying to make sure that all of those people understand things like
00:39:42
Speaker
systemic and structural racism or trying to make sure that faculty is prepared to deal with issues of race in the classroom or making sure, as you said, Janice, that students have the support that they need on those days when classes are really difficult and the conversations are difficult. And that's a challenge that we definitely need to step up to the plate on. And I think we're doing the work, but the work is slow.
00:40:08
Speaker
So I know that you're all students who are interested in and invested in social justice. And so I want to end with a question that I hope is a way to think toward the future and a brighter future. So I want you to imagine yourself 15 years from now. So you've been out of law school, you've passed the bar, you're practicing law.
00:40:32
Speaker
And tell me where you hope to be in 15 years. And how will we be a different institution 15 years from now than who we are now? So what do you hope for yourself? And what do you hope for the law school? Kayvon, can you start us off? Sure. Thank you for the question. So, um, 15 years from now, I mean, that's pretty far out, but I can try and make like a prediction. I mean, I promise you it will come faster than you can possibly imagine.
00:41:01
Speaker
I hope not. I feel like I'm 42. I'm only 24. So I mean, ideally, I would be I don't know if I'm gonna have my own law firm or working for someone else, but somehow helping like minority entrepreneurs and minority businesses. And like the reason for this would be to give back to the community and then also
00:41:25
Speaker
something that lacks and I talked to Janice about this. There's clearly like a lack of financial literacy and related concepts and like the black and other minority communities. So just something as simple as like helping minority businesses get set up legally and make sure that they're not exploited by big corporations or their peers that have legal knowledge would just be like another way to like promote generational wealth
00:41:52
Speaker
Those types of communities and I think that's super important because that's something that's also lacking in terms of what I think or hope that the law school in Camden would be doing 15 years from now somehow like establishing some type of pipeline from like the minority students in Camden and
00:42:10
Speaker
I mean, ideally what I would like to see is for the law school to do programming in the Camden High Schools and just, or even if it's some type of mentorship program where there's a volunteer law students who get partnered with the Camden High School students just so that the students themselves can actually see people who look like them in law school and that are also lawyers just to get that image in their head that
00:42:37
Speaker
anything's possible. And that's just like one thing that I would like to see from the law school moving forward, some type of mentorship program.
00:42:44
Speaker
Excellent, thank you. And I would be remiss, and Dean Friedman would not be happy with me if I didn't mention that we do have some programs like Marshall Brennan and Street Law where students are in Camden High School. So definitely not a mentoring program. And there's a lot more that I think that we could be doing in terms of that. So I agree with you, Kayvon. There's some work that we could do there that could be really meaningful and really fruitful.
00:43:11
Speaker
Morgan, what about you? 15 years out for you and then 15 years out for the law school? Okay. Well, for me, I would hope to be working at a nonprofit organization doing civil rights litigation, specifically section 1983 claims, which is like police brutality claims and things of that nature.
00:43:32
Speaker
and also working in social justice movements to abolish prisons and abolish the police. Or working in the cannabis industry to help minority entrepreneurs, specifically those who've been impacted and criminalized by the war on drugs. And then for the law school
00:43:53
Speaker
I would, well, first I want, and I would hope I would see it sooner than 15 years, that critical race theory and just, or just some sort of class that goes and contextualizes the different minority groups and how our country and our legal system has treated these minority groups and how that has influenced our legal decisions and what we see.
00:44:17
Speaker
and everything, I would hope that that would be a required course for all law students so that it could make the experience of minority students within the law school better. Well, hopefully that will be the goal at least. And also increasing the number of minorities. I hope there will be an increase in the school will become even more diverse just because I feel that part of the difficulties we have within the classroom is because of the lack of
00:44:45
Speaker
other students who may look like us or come from similar backgrounds or similar experiences as us. And I feel that, as Shanice mentioned, you know, we also, the school also should have more resources and I would want them to have more resources to support these minority students. But I do feel that a focus should be really, you know, as Shanice and Kayvon said, trying to
00:45:04
Speaker
diversify the law school even further so that the law school could be more representative of the community and of our nation so that we could have these future lawyers shape the country in a way that reflects the country. Terrific. Thank you.
00:45:21
Speaker
And Janice, you get the last word today. So for me in 15 years, I have no idea what I'm going to be doing, if I'm going to be honest. But one thing that I am passionate about, and it's not even a 15-year plan, it's actually more like a five-year plan, is I want to turn this programming that I developed, which Kayvon mentioned we had a discussion about, turn this programming that I developed into
00:45:46
Speaker
being more of a nonprofit organization. So I want to start this nonprofit. And it's aimed at filling the gap in education for life skills, financial literacy, career options, and things like that for Camden High School students. So very similar to what Kayvon was saying about the pipeline, which I could have directly benefited from when I was in high school.
00:46:08
Speaker
It's really to provide a route for students to be able to gain information, to be able to make educated decisions, to be able to be more informed about their options when it comes to life and being successful. So I would love to see that become a nonprofit. I don't know where I will be working or what I will be doing. For the law school, I have to agree with everyone else. I would love to see our diversity initiatives that have really picked up
00:46:35
Speaker
speed in the last three years or since I've been here. I would love to see them continue to move forward to attract more diverse candidates to see the student body diversified, but also the faculty diversified because we need diverse faculty that we can relate to that can bring these issues and present these issues that are so important to diverse students and how the law has affected them. So seeing diverse hiring practices, seeing
00:47:04
Speaker
diverse students continuing with these initiatives that we have started putting, you know, power behind. I would love to see the law school to continue to do that and actually implement these programs like implicit bias trainings that are mandatory, critical race theory that is mandatory, like those types of initiatives. Got it.
00:47:24
Speaker
Thank you. Well, I'm going to check back in with all of you in 15 years to see if you're doing the things that you are hoping that you're going to do. And I'm sure you will be. And so I'm extremely excited to see that. And I appreciate where you'd like to see the law school as well. So thank you so, so much for sharing your stories, for sharing what your lives have been like, and go back out to the world and make it a better place.
00:47:50
Speaker
Thank you, Dean Miterson. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you, Janice and people. That's all. The Power of Attorney is produced by Rutgers Law School. With two locations, minutes from Philadelphia and New York City, Rutgers Law offers the prestige of reputation of a large, nationally known university with a personal small campus experience. Learn more by visiting law.ruckers.edu.