WSU: Diversity At Our Law School
Western State University College of Law values and is proud of its diverse student body, faculty and staff. We seek to admit and employee individuals who through their personal, academic or professional background and experience will contribute to the diversity of the law school community, the legal profession, and society as a whole.
Well, we’ve got a fairly diverse faculty. We’re always looking to do better, but we have a significant number of women on the faculty. We have an African-American professor on the faculty, an Asian American on the faculty, gay and lesbian faculty members. And the student body is one of the most diverse of any law school in the country. We’re very proud of that. Orange County is a very, very diverse community and we’re very pleased that the student body kind of reflects that.
It’s not just one race or one gender. It seems like a diverse group and here you get an experience to network with different cultures and races. So it does add to the experiences of a law student and opens your mind up to new cultures and diversities.
There are students that range from 20 to 40. It seems like the older student’s age and wisdom apply a different type of educational experience as well. And the younger students seem to benefit from that.
We are consistently one of the most diverse student bodies in the country. That’s something that’s relatively easy to do because we’re from a pretty diverse part of the country, so we have people from an enormous variety of ethnic backgrounds.
Our faculty comes from all over. We’ve got people from the top law schools in the country, Harvard, which is where I went to school, Yale, Stanford, Chicago, so we have an extremely strong faculty, not just people from the good California schools like Berkley and Stanford, but people from a variety of backgrounds.
The student body is very diverse. I think the organizations show that. We have a variety of organizations… We don’t have to make an effort at it. One of the things we did this year… we had a diversity day, and the support from the student body for that day was, I mean, I didn’t expect to get that much support from the student body, so it was great. They really showed that they cared about it and it was one of the most successful events of the year.
We have a business law association. We have a criminal law association. We have like an international law association, so we have groups based on the type of law. We have an entertainment law association, but then we also have cultural clubs. We have an Asian-Pacific club, we have a Black student association club, we have a Latino-American club, so both based off of culture and based off the type of law you want to practice. All the student body clubs are open to all WSU members.
We have, for several years, been among the top diversity schools, in terms of the national profile of law schools. That reflects, partly, the diversity in southern California, but further than that, we also have a large number of the more non-traditional students. Someone who may be coming back to law school as a second career, to combine it with their skills in their business, or their work experience doing something else, and now, using that law degree to move further in their profession, or to start another profession. We also have a large number of students for whom law school is an opportunity, and they may be the first in their family to attend college. Or the first in their family to attain graduate study and to become an attorney, which is a huge opportunity for the immigrant community, for students that may come from less advantaged backgrounds. It’s progress for them, and for their whole families.