Howard University School of Law Earns National SBAAward

Talk about a turnaround! The law school at Howard University in Washington, D.C., hasn't had an extensive history of active ABA involvement. Yet this year, it emerged from a field of almost 30 student bar associations (SBA) to be named Student Bar Association of the Year. The award was announced at the division's Annual Meeting in August. What set Howard University's SBA apart from the rest of the student bar associations that applied for the award?

The story starts with three Howard University School of Law students who attended the ABA's Annual Meeting in San Francisco in the summer of 1997. Tanya Lee, then a second-year student at the school, was the newly appointed Law Student Division liaison to the ABA's Forum Committee on Affordable Housing and Community Development Law. In San Francisco, she ran into Howard students LaTonya Hayes and Leslie Clemons. Lee didn't know much about the ABA when she got to San Francisco, but she learned a lot there.

When Lee got back to Howard University and briefed then SBA President Gerald Smalls, he appointed her as the school's ABA/LSD school representative (see related article on page 34). Then Lee, Hayes, Clemons and another Howard student, Jonathan Mason-Kinsey, became lieutenant governors for the division's Eleventh Circuit, which encompasses Washington, D.C.-area law schools.

Smalls says Howard had always been involved in the community, but not necessarily in the ABA. For years, for example, Howard students have made monthly efforts to feed the homeless in Washington, D.C.-often at their own expense. Once Howard students learned of the Law Student Division's Work-A-Day program, a day each year when law students are encouraged to provide public service to their community, they were able to expand their program to feed the homeless. Last year on Work-A-Day, law students from the entire Eleventh Circuit joined Howard University law students to conduct a very successful program to feed the homeless.

Then, working off of the motto of "Lift As We Climb," Howard's student bar association developed Project Uplift, a series of public service projects. Howard students participated in an AIDS walk, a blood drive for the Red Cross and, along with students at several schools in the area, did everything from tutoring elementary students in academic subjects to adopting a middle school to just talking about life with the students.

In addition to its community service work, Howard's SBA worked with Dean Alice Gresham Bullock to implement a new grading curve, a new direct loan policy for first-year students, and a new bar exam prep program taught on Saturdays. The dean also set up a series of committees to examine various aspects of law school life. With 450 students, Howard is a small law school, and former SBA President Smalls says practically every student took on some new responsibility. "It was almost an obligation," he says-although, he jokes, "we left the 1Ls alone until second semester."

The student bar association also began programs designed to integrate first-year students into the student body, match first-year students with upperclass students, and organized friendly sporting competitions between the classes. It also cosponsored a symposium called "Race: A Town Meeting," a part of President Clinton's initiative on race.

The SBACommittee of the division's Board of Governors evaluates the applications and determines the winner of the division's annual SBA of the Year Award. Law Student Division Vice-Chair/SBA Jose Contreras, a student at Villanova University School of Law in Pennsylvania, says that, among other things, the committee looked for how a particular student bar association "got the job done." That is, the committee looked at the various programs the SBAs had run, how the SBAs advocated for their membership before a law school's administration, and the like.

Howard University's student bar association, Contreras says, excelled in every category the committee examined. The committee also took budget into account. At $7,000, Howard has one of the smallest SBA budgets; some SBAs have budgets approaching $100,000. Howard's 1997/98 SBA Executive Board consisted of President Gerald Smalls, Vice President James Andrews, Treasurer Neal Newman and Chief-of-Staff Osa Benson.

In addition to naming Howard University as the SBA of the Year, the Law Student Division recognized four "regional" SBAs of the Year: Albany Law School in New York in the Northeast; Northern Kentucky University Salmon P. Chase School of Law in the Midwest; the University of Miami School of Law in the Southeast; and Texas A&M University Law Center in the West.

Lee Farbman