Originally published in Student Lawyer magazine, December 2004 (Vol. 33, No. 4). All rights reserved.

Grant Program
Tulane Law School's Diversity Week Serves a Jambalaya of Events

by Katherine Licup

Thirty-one days. More than 20 events. Eight student organizations. Throw in a masquerade ball, a pachanga party, and karaoke. What do you get? Diversity Month, News Orleans style.

With funding from the ABA Law Student Division, student leaders at Tulane University School of Law last March produced a month of activities celebrating diversity. The purpose was “to create a forum where students can express their feelings, opinions, ideas, and thoughts about law, diversity, current events, cultural differences and similarities, and recent court decisions,” says LaDawn Blackett, the Black Law Students Association 2003-04 planning chair.

Students performed community service in exchange for a ticket to the masquerade ball. The American Constitution Society sponsored a presentation by New Orleans district attorney Eddie Jordan, titled “Diversity in Law Enforcement: A Compelling Interest.” BLSA invited prominent Dallas bankruptcy lawyer Clifton Jessup to speak. Students displayed their talents at an open-mike poetry slam at a local coffeehouse. Members of La Alianza taught 50 students how to salsa. Members of the Asian Pacific American Law Student Association showed students how to write their names in Chinese.

Tulane’s student bar association raised funds for most of the events’ $4,000 cost, which included expenditures for food, speaker travel, honorariums, decorations, and advertising. The Law Student Division’s Grant Program funded the rest.

If your student organization is producing an activity and you need some funding, the ABA Law Student Division may be able to help.

The Division’s Grant Program supports new programs and projects of student organizations at ABA-approved law schools that provide professionalism and ethics training, promote diversity in the legal profession, and advance public interest and public service efforts in local communities.

Grant applications are reviewed on an individual basis throughout the year, and funds are awarded on a reimbursement basis only. Approved applications may receive $500 or less, depending on the nature of the project and the availability of funding. Applications must be received by the Division’s Chicago office at least four weeks before the date of the project, which must be completed by May 1.

For detailed guidelines and to download an application, visit www.abanet.org/lsd/grant.html.

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