Georgetown and Harvard law students are hoping to cash in on the benefits their counterparts at Columbia Law School received this week — postponed or exempted final exams due to emotional trauma.
Following the grand jury decisions in the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Mo. and the Eric Garner case in New York, Columbia law students were given the chance to postpone exams because those cases threatened “to undermine a sense that the law is a fundamental pillar of society designed to protect fairness, due process and equality,” according to the interim dean.
Now minority student coalitions at Harvard and Georgetown law schools are pushing for the same consideration.
The Coalition at Harvard Law School sent a letter to Dean Martha Minow over the weekend asking for exam extensions, a formal address to the entire student body, student support services, and ongoing forums and discussions on this topic.
“Columbia Law School set an example one that we implore you to follow by quickly responding to its students’ requests. Our peer institutions have made efforts to stand on the right side of history. We challenge Harvard Law School to be not merely a school of law, but also a school of justice. Because this national tragedy implicates the legal system to which we have chosen to dedicate our lives, it presents us with a fundamental crisis of conscience and demands our immediate attention. Our choice to stand for justice rather than sit and prepare for exams is necessary in the context of a movement fighting for the lives that have been lost and continue to be at stake. This sacrifice is small,” the group wrote.
“…Harvard Law School has policies and procedures in place for students experiencing a personal emergency that interferes with an exam or immediate pre-exam preparation. This is more than a personal emergency. This is a national emergency.”
Minow offered the group a time and place to meet with faculty about these events Wednesday.
The Coalition of Students of Color at Georgetown University Law Center followed suit, sending a letter Saturday.
“We, students of color, cannot breathe. At Georgetown University Law Center (GULC), law students of color are underserved, unacknowledged, and unable to seek relief from our institution of legal education,” the group wrote.
The letter criticized the school’s “silence” on Ferguson and Garner and its “haphazard” panel discussion even on the topic.
Again, the postponement of exams was a major demand. The students also asked for a public recognition from the university, mental health resources, and “diversity retraining” for the law school’s faculty.
One administrator responded to the Georgetown group’s request for exam deferments and said they could apply to the registrar for delayed exams. These would be considered on a “case-by-case” basis, the response stated.
