Law Schools

Whining Millennials Or Structural Discrimination?

La Raza chapter blasts school over perceived slights at the annual SBA Awards. Do they have a point or is this just a waste of everyone's time?

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ComplaintUPDATE (4/22/16): This story is updated to reflect the SBA’s response to the La Raza letter.

The answer to the titular question is, in all fairness, probably “a bit of both.” On Tuesday, the La Raza Law Student Association chapter at the University of San Francisco School of Law posted an open letter to Facebook, protesting the annual SBA Awards for doling out one measly award to La Raza and shutting out BLSA altogether while raining down praise on the school’s tech and entrepreneurship club.

If the phrase “open letter” makes you smack your head on a table, well, you’re not alone. What used to be the province of elderly shut-ins complaining that “they just don’t make pop stars with gams like Jenny Lou Carson anymore” is now an outlet for perturbed 20-somethings to level their every perceived slight on social media.

And yet, this specific letter, while rhetorically overwrought, raises important issues that will inevitably go ignored because the letter itself seems to miss its own glaring point. This is why law students can’t have nice things.

How do they feel about the awards?

The actions, hard work, tenacity, passion and dedication of students of color at USF Law are going unnoticed and this is a mistake. With this letter, we demand attention, we demand for you to take notice and we demand to be heard.

Some people have real issues with the “D-word.” It definitely gets the ol’ eyes rolling on my end. Apparently it also riles up some students there:

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As my 1L year comes to an end, I’ve realized how so many millennials and other students at this school have jumped on the bandwagon of “we demand and deserve to be heard because our feelings are hurt.” (Can you tell how much I hate my generation…)

The “demand” as a political act is drenched with a bunch of ivory tower philosophical bulls**t that gives it a ton of cache in modern protest politics. But it’s also the language a petulant child would use, which happens to place the La Raza students directly in sync with the lazy Millennial stereotypes tossed around mostly by old people hoping to make their own meager accomplishments look passable by nurturing the myth that their ilk represent the high-water mark of human civilization. All this is to say that maybe this isn’t the best rhetorical choice for young people trying to be taken seriously.

On the other hand, we should consider this “demand” in context. They really aren’t saying they “demand and deserve to be heard because our feelings are hurt.” The letter just asks for someone to read it and think about it. That’s… actually not so hard.

So what are they exercised about?

This is an open letter to address the recent SBA’s Student Organization Awards held last week, but more importantly, the lack of transparency and inclusion for student organizations at USF Law that uplift students of color. It has come to our attention that TESLA won half of the awards presented by the SBA, and in fact, BLSA did not win any despite being nominated. Although La Raza won one award, the clear lack of recognition for diversity, inclusion and advocacy for social justice is an issue at USF Law and in the student body.

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Yeah, well, there’s your first problem. Transparency kind of defeats the whole purpose of these awards. They’re supposed to be a surprise. The Oscars brings in those goons from PwC for exactly this purpose. Nobody enjoys the awards presentation where everyone knows who’s going to win. And as they say — usually through the clenched teeth of bitterness and Botox — “it’s an honor just to be nominated.”

But the Oscars comparison is also salient. The #OscarsSoWhite protest took on a life of its own during this year’s presentation. While Academy defenders would plead that there’s no conspiracy to keep minorities out of the running, this gnashing of teeth ultimately missed the point. Hollywood really doesn’t care about giving minority actors a shot at headlining their “can’t miss” projects and come awards season that’s going to rear its head. Were the 2016 Academy Awards the most pressing civil rights struggle of our generation? Not at all, but that’s not really a reason to blow it off. As a society, we probably should aspire to chew bubble gum and walk at the same time.

Bringing us back to USF’s SBA Awards. Ostensibly, this annual trinket give-away rewards student groups for their contributions to campus. That organizations with a broad appeal to the whole student body will see their efforts recognized more readily than those with a tighter, identity-based focus really shouldn’t surprise anyone. The average SBA voter in this contest probably has no clue how important BLSA or La Raza are to the students they serve and no written account of their efforts is ever going to fully convey that. But just like the Oscars, this sort of systematic oversight isn’t a conspiracy, it’s f**king embedded in the DNA of the process. Instead of searching for some magically equitable awards process, maybe it’s worth junking this completely unnecessary back-patting party in its entirety.

Because why, the hell, do people care about SBA? Appealing to an institution comprised of gunners who can’t make law review raises some questions about one’s priorities. What’s important is that some light gets thrown on how undervalued these groups are within the student organization structure and one would hope it wouldn’t take a gala to suss this out. Moreover whatever “reforms” get slapped onto this superstructure will only prove inadequate in a few years when some other group’s efforts are passively snubbed.

That’s the lesson to learn here. Whether one group got justifiably screwed or not by some arcane standard held in the SBA Necronomicon isn’t really the point — there’s no reason to even open this door and no amount of wishing is going to fix this system.

UPDATE (4/22/16): The SBA letter attached here goes a long way to proving my point, revealing a relatively haphazard and entirely subjective voting process. That said, the SBA letter fully grasps La Raza’s concerns and uses the platform to call for increased engagement in the Student Senate. Still not sure that can ever overcome the inherent deficiencies of this system, but it’s good to see the SBA is trying to get on the same page instead of sabotaging the process through denial.

(Check out the full letter on the next page…)

Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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