The law school has made many minority students feel unsafe and unwelcome.
“It’s like I’m invisible. No one else has a problem with how white the school is.” “If there is anyone [Scalia Law] respects, it’s white people.” Students responded that way to an anonymous, informal survey on diversity and inclusion at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School in October 2019. Another student wrote, “I do not feel safe as a woman at [Scalia Law], let alone respected.” Still another student stated, “I felt like coming to this school forced me to go back into the closet on my sexuality.”
In October 2019, law students conducted an informal survey on diversity and inclusion at Scalia Law.
The diversity and inclusion survey collected qualitative evidence of law students’ experiences on campus. The survey responses demonstrated that “there are students . . . who value diversity and inclusion at Antonin Scalia Law School and feel that they have been alienated by other students, faculty, and the administration,” recent law school graduate Flisha Choi explained.
Through the survey, students described the discrimination and prejudice they experienced at Scalia Law.
One student wrote, “I’ve been stopped in the library on multiple occasions to produce my student ID, when my white classmates, who sometimes were with me, did not have to produce the ID.” Other students of color have been asked if they were born in the United States or whether they were admitted due to affirmative action. “It’s hard not to be resigned as a student of color at the law school,” recent law school graduate Aris Hart explained. “There’s a general feeling that the school isn’t going to change because the school has made its money by fostering the exact kind of environment that [fails to] attract . . . minority students.” If “there are Black, Asian, and Latinx Republicans who want to go to law school,” Hart asked, why do even those students seem to avoid Scalia Law?
Many students reported that their professors made them feel unwelcome and stifled discussion during class.
Among other complaints, students shared that professors made disparaging remarks about Muslims; claimed that the wage gap and postpartum depression were myths; joked about police brutality and Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson, MO; described women who report rape and sexual harassment as “liars”; and joked about mental illness. During my mandatory first-year microeconomics final examination, I was required to calculate the utility a male employer derived from sexually harassing his female employees. I was livid.
Students also said their views were frequently stifled during classroom discussions. Third-year law student Molly Lovern explained that “Scalia Law prides itself on being a free-speech haven, but whenever classrooms become hostile to marginalized groups the opposite effect is achieved. Students of color, disabled students, queer students, and all students with marginalized identities must have equal access to our classrooms if we are to live up to a standard of open and productive discourse.” Progressive students also said their views were silenced in class. One student said “[p]rofessors not only voice their own harmful opinions, but they present them to the class as fact. Opposing ideas are shut down, ridiculed . . . or outright banned from discussions by the professor.” Another student said she no longer shares her views in class: “I would put my grade in jeopardy if I shared my opinion.”
“There is a population of students who feel disempowered from speaking up because of hostility in the classroom,” Choi said, adding, “This hostility prevents students from engaging in class and in productive conversations.” While the diversity and inclusion survey is merely a “starting point for a deeper discussion,” the law school administration must take it seriously. “A diverse academic environment benefits not only our diverse students, but the whole student body, as well. Limiting that environment is not an accurate representation of the real world, and I believe it will hinder us as practicing attorneys,” Choi said.
Although aware of its failure to foster inclusivity at Scalia Law, the law school administration has not done enough to create meaningful change.
Rather than force individual students to advocate for themselves, George Mason University should work to reshape the culture at Scalia Law. Although the law school administration claimed to be aware of the problems identified in the survey, it has failed to act with the sense of urgency those problems deserve. For example, one student survey response said, “I tried talking to the school administration during my 1L year. All I got out of that experience was two meetings and a coffee mug. It felt like the school was unwilling to do anything.”
The law school’s most visible attempt at promoting inclusivity, the Diversity & Inclusion Certificate program, is often “advertised as a resume-booster to help privileged students become more attractive to firms.” As one student explained, “it’s pretty insulting that we can have a program to promote diversity to help people get jobs” when we do not “actually deal with the discrimination students” experience on campus.
Scalia Law must take immediate action to promote diversity and foster a more inclusive campus.
After a couple of meetings with the law school administration, Scalia Law indicated that it would only implement two new solutions identified in the survey: (1) establish a Patriot Pantry at the Arlington Campus for students experiencing food insecurity and (2) search for space for a gender-neutral restroom in Hazel Hall. Scalia Law must take additional meaningful action steps, including by establishing a multicultural center for minority students; hiring and retaining more diverse faculty; recruiting more minority students; establishing scholarships for minority students; and conducting power and privilege trainings for all students and faculty.
“Students should not have to beg for inclusion. Students should not have to rally together to be treated with basic respect and dignity. Students should not have to bark up every tree to get help feeling safe at school. This survey should not have been necessary. It is not the job of students to juggle their education all while compiling empirical evidence of discrimination and marginalization within the school in an attempt to influence administration to act,” third-year law student Rachel Elliott said.
George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School is responsible for educating a new generation of lawyers, and it must therefore “take responsibility for the culture it has cultivated.” As a recent graduate, I hope the law school administration will ensure that current and future students feel more welcome at Scalia Law than many of my friends and classmates ever did. If I had it my way, we would topple the Scalia statue and everything it represents. At the very least, George Mason University should implement the concrete solutions that students have identified.
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