The Importance of Diversity Discussed at King Hall: Fall 2011 Admissions Summit

Early this September, the LSA President, Rabia Paracha, spoke with Dean Johnson about holding an Admissions Summit to address student concern regarding the number of underrepresented populations at King Hall.  After gauging the interest of administrators, the LSA President worked with Dean Pinkney to set a date and to invite key student leaders and administrators.

The summit provided an opportunity for the students and administrators to engage in meaningful discussion on not only what administrators can do to address this ongoing concern but also what the students and the administrators can do together to address this concern.  Such ideas as creating an endowment fund and encouraging an increase in student outreach efforts had been discussed by separate and small groups at King Hall, but had not yet been placed into some collaborative effort utilizing the interested administrators and students. 

The Admissions Summit was held on Thursday, September 29th, 2011, and acted as a catalyst to create a collaborative effort between the students and administrators that will affect not only this year's Admission's cycle but also all future Admissions cycles.  

Led by Serena Salinas, the LSA's Recruitment, Retention, and Outreach Committee is now working on compiling a memorandum, in light of the discussion of the September 29th Admissions Summit, on next steps the students suggest the Administration take.

The following Administrators were in attendance: Dean Johnson, Dean Amar, Dean Pinkney, and Professor Ikemoto

The following students were also in attendance: Rabia Paracha, Michael Wu, Imron Bhatti, Joanna Cuevas Ingram, Uzair Saleem, Arnulfo Medina, Alana Penn, Miles Hogan, Natalie James, Embert Madison, Fabiola Larios, and Serena Salinas.

For more information or comments, please contact Rabia Paracha at raparacha@ucdavis.edu or Serena Salinas at sfsalinas@ucdavis.edu.

On a related note, students may be interested in this article, which was published in a symposium of articles by law school deans: http://www.uiowa.edu/~ilr/issues/ILR_96-5_Johnson.pdf [The Importance of Student and Faculty Diversity in Law Schools: One Dean’s Perspective by Kevin Johnson]