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EXTERNAL COMMITTEES
Academic Enhancement Committee: Student Contacts: Lisa Chiang and Esin Onart ~ chiang@, onart@
The Academic Enhancement Program (AEP) Committee seeks to diversify NWSL’s student body, which is geographically diverse but lacks other forms of diversity. The student representatives will work with faculty members, the AEP Program Director, and the Associate Dean to admit students from non-traditional backgrounds. The AEP admissions process does not consider undergraduate grades and LSAT scores solely, but also examines an applicant’s other attributes which demonstrate his or her high likelihood of success in law school and beyond. The AEP Committee does not fill any quotas, nor does it deny admission to other students (the Bakke issue). Criteria for admission include, but are not limited to: membership in ethnic and racial minorities, financial hardship, English as a second language, and experiences with discrimination.
The dearth of women, minorities and other historically disenfranchised groups in the legal profession is not a coincidence of occupational choices, but illustrates American jurisprudence. Atrocities such as slavery, alien land laws, segregation, and Japanese internment during World War II remind us that our laws have not always been colorblind. Diversifying our student body will ultimately increase access to justice by enriching the education of all of our students.
Admissions Committee: Student Contact: Zeke Carder ~ carder@
The Admissions Committee has not had its first meeting, and will probably not meet until the beginning of next semester. The Chair of the Admissions Committee is Steven Kanter. Professor Kanter has said that one of the committee's goals this year is to increase the diversity of the student body.
Alumni Board: Student Contacts: Linda Anderson and Michael Fleming ~ lindaa@, mfleming@
The Alumni Board sets out goals to have the alumni help the school in the most effective way possible. The committee is broken up into subcommittees. These each touch on an area in which the Alumni Board wants to help the school. These areas are: Admissions, Career Services, Development, and Professionalism. The next meeting is a retreat on November 7. The subcommittees will set up their goals for the year at this retreat.
Board of Trustees: Student Contact: Robin Snyder ~ rsnyder@
The Board of Trustees will be meeting on November 20 and Robin will be making a presentation about the law school’s frustration with the Executive Council’s transportation policies.
Board of Visitors: Student Contact: Joel Shapiro ~ jshapiro@
The SBA Board of Visitors representative attends the meetings of the Board of Visitors (which is essentially the Board of Trustees for the law school). The Board meets once per semester and deals with issues such as budgeting and planning for the law school. The board makes decisions on strategic issues such as faculty hiring, curriculum, capital improvements, fundraising initiatives, alumni relations, student recruitment, and tuition costs and financial assistance. The SBA representative attends all Board meetings and speaks on behalf of the SBA and the student body.
Budget Committee: Student Contacts: Kevin Minoli and Sabrina Venskus ~ minoli@, venskus@
Prof. Funk (Chair), Art LaFrance, Bernie Vail, Terry Wright, Sabrina Venskus, and Kevin Minoli are regular members of the Budget Committee. Peter Nycum, Lee Gadinas, and Dean Huffman are ex officio members. Our responsibilities/goals are to provide a proposed operating budget to the faculty for its adoption and to propose any other budget/money-related matters to the faculty as the Committee may decide.
Business Law Contact: Student Contact: Davis Yee ~ dyee@
Are you interested in the Business Law Certificate? 1998 is the inaugural year for the certificate. Because it is relatively new, the requirements for receiving it have not withstood the test of time. Questions have come up as to the paper requirements and as to how they correlate with those of the environmental and federal tax certificates. As your business law representative, I welcome your suggestions and your concerns on these matters and any others that you may have. If you are interested in getting the business law certificate, please let me know who you are!
Curriculum Committee: Student Contacts: Alex Donahue and Margi Lifsey ~ adonahue@, lifsey@
Listed below are some tasks that the Curriculum Committee plans to address this coming year:
1. Determine courses for Summer School 1999.
2. Approve externships and individual tutorials for Spring, 1999
3. Determine the curriculum for the 99-00 school year and project the curriculum out over the 3-year plan.
4. Approve externships and individual tutorials for Fall 2000.
5. Major project: look at the law school's grading and ranking systems and determine(1) whether changes should be proposed, and
(2) if so, specifically what changes to propose.
Faculty Committee: Student Contacts: Brett Brownscombe and Brent Foster ~ brett@, bfoster@
The Faculty at its last meeting unanimously embraced Brett and Brent’s request that the faculty:
(1) extend its recommendation concerning the postponement of construction of the Huston parking lot (or any new parking lot designed to accomodate law students) until the end of the 1999/2000 academic year for the purpose of allowing a realistic test of the the effectiveness of an aggressive alternative transportation program; and
(2) clarify that the final alternative transportation program adopted by the College should include:
(a) a shuttle service to neighborhoods where law students actually live (e.g. Sellwood, Hawthorne area, Lake Oswego, and/or Multnomah Village);
(b) the availability of parking fees for the full funding of agressive alternative transportation options; including a shuttle service, where parking fee dollars are not diverted into the College’s parking structure plans until at least the end of the 1999/2000 academic year; and
(c) an exemption from parking fees for student, faculty, and staff carpool drivers.
Before the vote, Dean Huffman argued against free carpooling, maintaining that it would present enforcement difficulties not presented by reduction in carpooling rates.
Faculty Appointments: Student Contacts: Jenine Camilleri and Krista Koehl ~ jmc@, koehl@
Krista Koehl and Jenine Camilleri, as your Faculty Appointments Representatives for SBA, have been busy working on the Faculty Appointment Committee. This committee is currently looking to fill a tenure-track faculty position at the law school. The committee is organized under the leadership of Professors Bogdanski, Johnston, Steverson and Loren. As SBA representatives, we inform the committee on any input we receive from the student body that pertains to this appointment of a possible new faculty member.
Over the last month, the committee perused over 600 resumés of applicants and made decisions as to whom the committee will interview at the Association of American Law Schools Faculty Recruitment Conference in Washington D.C. at the end of October.
Honor Board: Student Contact: Emily Davis ~ ecdavis@
“Mr. Naughty: A Tale Of Woe.” A detailed explanation of the NWSL honor code, how to avoid violating it, and what happens to people who do starts on page 41 of “What’s What.” All students should be familiar with the honor code; complying is generally an exercise in common sense and good manners, but avoiding an inadvertent violation is worth the ten minutes it takes to read the rules.
Don’t end up like Mr. Naughty! Mr. Naughty didn’t read the honor code and hid a reporter in the treatise section when he went to class so no one else would use it while he needed it. Unluckily for Mr. Naughty, Ms. Ethics saw him! And because disclosing honor code violations is also part of complying with the honor code, Ms. Ethics reported what she saw to Professor Tattletale.
In accordance with the procedures set forth in “What’s What,” Professor Tattletale reported the incident to the Dean and informed Mr. Naughty that he had violated the honor code. Then, in the grand American tradition of due process, Mr. Naughty was called before the Honor Board to tell his side of the story.
The Honor Board is composed of two faculty members (to be appointed by the Dean when the board is convened) and the Honor Board Representative, a member of the student body elected in the annual SBA elections (this year, 2L Emily Davis). “What’s What” sets forth a scheme for keeping grossly biased persons from sitting on the honor board, and the board reviews all alleged offenses de novo.
What, you wonder, became of Mr. Naughty? He received a scathing reprimand. Ouch! Don’t let this happen to you. Read the Honor Code!
Natural Resources Committee: Student Contacts: Alex West and Amie Wexler ~ west@, wexler@
The Natural Resources Committee met on September 22 with faculty members Michael Blumm, Craig Johnston, Bill Funk, Janet Neuman, Dan Rohlf, Chris Wold, and Janice Weis present, along with student representatives Amie Wexler and Alex West. The Committee discussed the upcoming Convention on Biodiversity, organized by Dan Rohlf, to be held Friday, April 16 on the upper campus. There may be a second-day roundtable workshop, depending on availability of funds. The Environmental Law Journal is being alerted about the conference to see if some of the associated papers could be published.
Janice Weis's report from summer school 1998 showed that we lost money on the short courses, but the Committee agreed to continue the program with an eye toward getting more students and reducing publicity costs. The lineup for next summer will be:
2-week courses: Wetlands; Issues in Public Lands; Citizen Suits.
6-week field class: Legal Ecology.
5-week courses: Administrative Law; Environmental Law.
The Committee discussed Larry Watters' proposal for an Ocean and Coastal field class, but decided that it would compete with the Legal Ecology course. The Ocean and Coastal course, in addition to an ESA class, a NAFTA Environmental Issues course, and Water Law, will be considered for the summer of 2000.
There was also some discussion of budget issues, including options for making up an $18,000 shortfall in the main Natural Resources budget. Adding additional profitable programs and finding outside funding for the NRLI Distinguished Visitor program were suggested.
The Committee met again on October 20 to discuss curriculum issues, including a review of the next cycle of the three-year plan, and Agricultural and Animal Law certificate class suggestions. Requirements of the LLM thesis were discussed, as were ideas about a "Writing Improvement Program."
Technology: Student Contact: Kenneth Stafford ~ kas@
The Technology Committee's function is to determine what the Law School's technology needs are and how those needs should be met. This year's committee members are Brian Blum, James Bailey, Greg Frye, Lydia Loren, Peter Nycum, Richard Slottee, and Kenneth Stafford. The Committee has been looking for ways to prioritize the student, faculty, and staff demands on Computing Services' scarce resources. Last spring, the Committee proposed a support policy intended to permit Computing Services to focus on those areas where its expertise is most needed.
The dawn of the new millennium and what it means for the school's computers was another hot topic at our last meeting. Anyone with questions or concerns should feel free to contact Kenneth Stafford (kas@lclark.edu).
INTERNAL COMMITTEES
Ad Hoc Parking Committee: Chair: Zeke Carder ~ carder@
At the first SBA meeting this year, an ad hoc Parking Committee was formed after a discussion on President Mooney's parking and transportation memo to the Lewis and Clark community. The committee was formed to write a letter on behalf of the entire SBA in support of the TAG recommendations. TAG was a group, representing all constituencies, created by President Mooney and the Executive Council to study, form, and recommend transportation alternatives to reduce the number of single occupancy vehicles (SOVs) coming to L&C on a daily basis. President Mooney's memo failed to address or include many of TAG's recommendations.
To tackle this hearty task, the Parking committee met, formally and informally, to come up with a strategy. Several of the committee members drafted that letter requesting comments from the rest of the group, while others set out to get the rest of the student body involved. The committee posted the TAG proposals and a draft of the letter on SBA's web page and solicited comments from students, staff and faculty at two open meetings. The drafters went back to work to include some of these comments and the final letter was sent on Sept. 28.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycling (RRR) Committee: Brenna Bell and Sabrina Venskus ~ CoChairs ~ bell@, venskus@
General Goals: To focus on ways to make our law school act in terms of what it is nationally recognized for: a number one environmental law school. More specifically, to follow the lead (and perhaps become a leader ourselves) of other progressive institutions by reducing waste, using recycled products and less resource intensive products, and reusing and recycling resources.
Some areas we are currently working on:
1) Ensuring that recycled paper is stocked and used at the copy center and the various copy machines.
2) Computing Center:-have cover pages removed
-have the print command's default print 2-sided copies, instead
of the current one-sided default.-have a draft printer set up with one-sided copies as the paper stock (this will be an objective if we can't get the cover pages removed from print jobs.)
3) Cloth towels in the bathroom alongside the paper towels.
4) Bon Appétit:
-do away with the box lunches. They generate an incredible amount of waste.
-cloth napkins instead of paper ones-non-packaged condiments
5) Student Bookstore:
-work on stocking environmentally-sensitive products such as tree-free paper,
100% post-consumer paper and notebooks, recycled plastic binders and folders, organic cotton t-shirts, etc.6) Air Quality and Light Quality in the classrooms and library:
-have facility services change the air filters in the classrooms and library.
-put in full spectrum lighting, or at least something up a grade from the florescent bulbs now utilized in the classrooms.
Student Services Committee: Chair: Alex Donahue ~ adonahue@
Here are the issues this committee will be covering. We have not yet met to prioritize our list, but I intend to start by pushing for progress on the following issues:
* support for Loan Repayment Assistance Program
* another microwave
* more computers in the library
RANDOM NOTES
Minutes
The minutes from the Retreat were changed from “[t]he SBA does not like to give money for speakers, administrative costs, conferences, parking fees, and seed money” to “[t]he SBA has a policy of not giving money for speakers, administrative costs, conferences, parking fees, and seed money.” Actually, we do like giving money for such things. We just don’t have enough of it. Who does?
Meetings/Events
The next Pizza with the Dean will be at noon in Room 4 on Wednesday, Nov. 18.
The next SBA meeting will be on the evening of Sunday, Nov. 22.
All students are invited to all SBA functions.
Rules
Article VI. Section D of the SBA Bylaws has been changed to the following:
D. Recycled paper shall be used for all SBA and SBA-funded group photocopying purposes.
1. 100% recycled paper will be used when practicable; otherwise lesser percentage recycled paper may be substituted.
2. This provision shall apply to all on-campus and off-campus photocopying pending availability of recycled paper on campus, but no later than November 1, 1998.
3. This provision shall not apply to personal photocopying by SBA members or to non-SBA funded group photocopying, although SBA strongly recommends the use of recycled paper in these instances as well.