3 minute read
CLASS OF 2020 STUDENT VOICES
ALIXIS RUSSELL
The end of Alixis Russell’s law school career didn’t turn out the way she expected.
As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Russell and her fellow Louisville Law classmates returned from spring break to a drastically different landscape than the one they had left — virtual classes and exams, a pass/fail grading system for their final semester, and a postponed graduation.
And for Russell, the pandemic has meant something else: as a member of the Kentucky National Guard, she was called to state active duty.
She explains that this means a unit is “called to do whatever the Commonwealth or the Governor needs you to do.”
Russell, whose role with the National Guard has been as a paralegal specialist working with JAG attorneys, was called to pack and load boxes for the Dare to Care Food Bank. Some of her fellow soldiers worked the loading docks and sorted donations. The nature of these tasks made the call for social distancing difficult, Russell acknowledges.
During this mission, Russell didn’t attend her law school classes. She says her professors were supportive and flexible, as they were about her role with the National Guard all during law school.
That support has been invaluable during a mentally and emotionally draining time, Russell says.
LAUREN NORTH
Thanks to a fellowship from national reproductive justice nonprofit If/When/How, 2020 graduate Lauren North will be able to continue working in two of the areas she is most passionate about: voter engagement and advocating for the rights of women and girls.
North began the one-year fellowship in September — just ahead of the presidential election.
“Safe to say, this will be an exciting election season,” North says, noting that how the election will proceed in the wake of — or during — the coronavirus pandemic remains to be seen.
If/When/How matched North with Atlanta-based Women Engaged, a nonprofit that develops policy recommendations, conducts research and organizes initiatives with and for women and youth of color.
With Women Engaged, North’s focus is on voter engagement, including registration, conducting programming, developing priorities and working with community partners.
SUZY MARINO
One recent alumna at the University of Louisville School of Law credits her experience as a bone marrow donor with bringing her to law school.
When May 2020 graduate Suzy Marino was an undergraduate student at San Diego State University, she signed up with Be the Match’s donor registry. She ended up donating bone marrow to the son of Beth McMasters (Class of 1994), a Louisville lawyer.
One year after the transplant — Marino’s senior year of college — she received a letter from her recipient. They began corresponding, and Marino planned to come to Louisville for a visit in February 2016. Just before she was set to arrive, her recipient, Owen McMasters, died at the age of 16.
Marino made the trip to Louisville anyway — attorneys at McMasters’ firm, McMasters Keith Butler, Inc., picked her up from the airport. She attended Owen’s visitation and ended up coming back to Louisville for a week at the end of her senior year.
During that trip, she spent time with McMasters and her fellow attorneys, all of whom were women.
“I met all these women who were vibrant and outgoing and who were attorneys,” said Marino. She had never considered law school — or moving to Kentucky — before she met the McMasters family. But she ended up moving in with them while studying for the LSAT. Louisville Law was the only law school she applied to.
