BLSA Equality Demands Jan. 15 Response

BLSA Equity Demands Letter – Jan. 15, 2021 Response The LLS administration unequivocally stands in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and with the LLS Black Law Students Association. As part of the overall LMU community, the LLS administration has made anti-racism an explicit focus of LLS’s equity and inclusion mission and as such, is taking steps toward institutionalizing anti-racist values throughout the law school.

This is a permanent commitment and therefore requires our persistent dedication and committed resources. We hope for BLSA’s continued collaboration and we thank BLSA for its leadership in racial justice.

This document is a follow-up to Dean Waterstone’s letter dated Nov. 16, 2020 in response to BLSA’s Equity Demands Letter of Nov. 10, 2020. We thank BLSA for its cooperation in providing the administration with sufficient time to meet with the faculty chairs and staff directors of the various issues, programs and activities identified in BLSA’s Equity Demands Letter, in order to collect the information to draft this document. While we hope this document is informative, we also see it as a work-in-progress, to be followed by subsequent conversations with you, other LLS community members and written updates.

In what follows, each BLSA equity demand is followed by the information that the LLS administration gathered from faculty committees and staff units related to each respective demand. Please note that the BLSA equity demands are listed point by point, without the substantive background for each demand provided in the full BLSA Equity Demands Letter which can be found by referring to the full letter. Although not included below, the substantive background for each BLSA equity demand fully informed the below responses to each demand.

To facilitate clarity, the BLSA equity demands are in black font while the LLS responses are in blue font.

Finally, the LLS administration would like to highlight and credit the critical work of BLSA that set into motion LLS’s operationalization of BLSA’s equity demands described below. BLSA is a fundamental part of LLS’s mission and community. BLSA provides a safe space and an essential resource for the success of LLS’s Black law students. BLSA is also a leader for racial justice throughout the LLS, LMU and broader communities. On June 13, 2020, LLS BLSA spearheaded a massive coordinating action to mobilize law students across all Los Angeles law schools to march in support of Black Lives Matter and racial justice. BLSA then called upon LLS’s administration and faculty to convene a meeting in July 2020 with BLSA board members and SBA leaders in attendance. The students shared their experiences and presented substantive research on the impediments to success for Black law students and other marginalized law students when their law school education fails to deliver an anti-racist education. BLSA has been a vigilant guide for LLS’s anti-racism, equity and inclusion efforts.

Thank you and we look forward to continuing our work towards an anti-racist LLS. 1. A mandatory shift to an anti-racist education: a. LLS must establish a mandatory session on the study of racism and systemic oppression for incoming students during orientation that is led by an expert

qualified to adequately address the conversation and relay its significance to admits at the start of every new school year. i. The LLS administration unreservedly endorses this equity demand and has implemented for newly entering students, mandatory orientation sessions that: 1) introduces students to the historic relationship and contemporary relevance of law and systemic racism and 2) engages students in small group discussions on implicit bias, microaggressions and imposter syndrome. These sessions were facilitated by LLS experts on critical race theory and cultural competence. LLS will utilize external experts in psychology for the latter sessions on implicit bias, microaggressions and imposter syndrome for the entering class of fall 2021. LLS will continue to provide these mandatory sessions and seeks to improve them to facilitate the following goals that: 1) entering students will understand the historic relationship between law and systemic race subordination to inform their legal education and legal careers going forward and 2) entering students will understand how implicit bias, microaggressions and imposter syndrome, which disproportionately effect marginalized identity groups based on race, gender, gender identity, sexuality, disability, national origin, religion, immigration status and socioeconomic status, may impede learning outcomes and the support resources at LLS and LMU available to assist students to address these barriers. The LLS administration agrees with BLSA that assigning mandatory readings over the summer including The New Jim Crow will facilitate these goals. b. First-year classes must incorporate the recently enacted learning outcome regarding systemic inequality into all 1L foundational courses. i. The LLS administration has taken an explicit position of anti-racism, equity and inclusion throughout LLS’s activities. As such, we agree that the recently enacted learning outcome on systemic inequality must be incorporated into LLS’s curriculum in a manner that ensures that our graduates achieve the learning outcome. Like the enactment of the new learning outcome, the integration of it throughout LLS’s curriculum falls under LLS’s system of faculty governance. Faculty governance means that the faculty has responsibility for and authority over policy decisions regarding academic and curricular matters. The administration manages the daily operations of the law school, guided by faculty policy decisions.

Faculty governance is exercised through faculty-run committees which make recommendations to the faculty to be considered and voted on at faculty meetings. The faculty-run Equity and Inclusion Committee (EIC), comprised of members from the administration, faculty, staff and student body, proposed the new learning outcome on systemic inequality to the faculty and the faculty approved the learning outcome.

The faculty will now determine the implementation strategy for the new learning outcome. To this end, the administration has asked the EIC,

Curriculum Committee and JD Assessment Committee to collaborate to propose an implementation strategy for the new learning outcome.

Beginning this semester, these committees will consider, among other steps, the incorporation of the learning outcome throughout all 1L foundational courses. The work of these committees will include a survey of LLS’s overall curriculum, to what extent that curriculum fulfills LLS’s learning outcomes (including the new learning outcome on systemic inequality) and the measures undertaken by faculty members to determine the achievement of course learning outcomes. This process of information gathering begins in January 2021. The process will include discussion with faculty, staff and students who serve on the aforementioned committees and will seek feedback from the broader faculty, student body and staff. By late spring semester 2021, the administration expects that one or more of these committees will present to the full faculty a proposal for the implementation of the new learning outcome, including their recommendation on the mandatory adoption of the learning outcome throughout 1L foundational courses. c. LLS must enact a graduation requirement mandating that each student complete a course that explores racism and systemic oppression under the law. i. A new graduation requirement must be enacted by faculty governance according to the process explained above. The LLS administration has asked the above identified committees to provide guidance to the faculty on the feasibility of adding a graduation requirement in the form of a course or courses that explores racism and systemic oppression under the law. The curriculum survey will provide information on the currently offered courses that explore racism and systemic oppression under the law and the range of courses that will need to be added to provide all students with enough enrollment options to fulfill a new graduation requirement.

We expect a faculty recommendation on this graduation requirement by the end of spring semester 2021, at which time the faculty can consider the feasibility of implementing it and take the appropriate next steps. Because the scheduling of most courses takes place approximately one year before course registration opens to student enrollment, if the new graduation requirement is proposed and approved by all faculty, the timeline for its initiation would begin fall of 2022.

In the meantime, since the summer of 2020, the LLS administration has offered pedagogy workshops for all faculty to provide them with guidance on the incorporation of anti-racist and anti-bias teaching methods. As a result, many faculty members have modified their courses to include sections on the law’s relationship to systemic racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism and other. This semester, the LLS faculty continues its work on anti-racism pedagogy. First, a cohort of LLS faculty will be participating in a pilot project offered by LMU’s Center for Excellence in Teaching, focused on decolonizing teaching approaches. Second, LMU’s

psychology department is providing mandatory implicit bias workshops for all faculty on Jan. 22nd and Jan. 29th. Third, LLS is organizing a teaching retreat for all faculty early summer of 2021 with external and internal experts on anti-racist and anti-bias pedagogy to better equip faculty members to deliver courses that incorporate the new learning outcome on systemic inequality.

2. Increased academic and occupational opportunities for BIPOC students a. LLS must commit to a deadline for the opening of a Racial Justice Center with sufficient funding for faculty, advisors, clinics, and externship opportunities for students. i. The LLS administration has been working with faculty, staff and students to establish the Racial Justice Center since last summer. LLS has obtained additional funding streams to launch the RJC with new academic and clinical opportunities for students. We expect to publicly launch the RJC this semester by March 1, 2021.

b. LLS should expand its strong academic support program in order to provide underrepresented students with additional academic resources and tools to succeed. i. The LLS administration endorses the expansion of our academic support programs for all students who would benefit from such programs, especially underrepresented students. The administration has consulted with the faculty who run LLS’s academic support programs to consider its expansion in light of the concerns raised in BLSA’s Equity Demands Letter. The administration and the faculty who oversee academic support would like to meet with BLSA to help inform the design of LLS’s academic support programs to better meet the needs of Black law students.

3. Increased ways to hold faculty and administration accountable a. LLS must create a centralized process for students to air grievances and alert the administration to instances of racism, hate, or bias within our community and our classrooms, as well as complete transparency in how the administration plans to address such grievances. i. The LLS administration agrees that this equity demand must be achieved as soon as possible. We are currently working with LMU’s Office of Intercultural Affairs (OIA), Title IX Office, and Bias Incident Response Team to determine a centralized process for students to report incidents of discrimination and bias. We will report back on our progress by March 1, 2021.

b. Students must give an opportunity to evaluate the efficacy of faculty in addressing race and systemic inequality within their respective classes. BLSA demands an opportunity for students to reflect on and evaluate each of their professors’ efficacy in addressing race and systemic inequality within their respective classes.

i. The LLS administration agrees that the quality of a professor’s instruction depends on a range of factors including the professor’s attention to the law’s relationship to social realities including systemic subordination based on race, gender, gender identity, sexuality, disability, religion, national origin, immigration status and/or socioeconomic status. LLS has several methods for evaluating teaching effectiveness: student evaluations, peer evaluations and self-evaluations. Student evaluation methods require the approval of faculty under the faculty governance process described above. Several years ago, LLS convened an ad hoc faculty committee to recommend changes to the student evaluation form. The work of the Student Evaluation Committee raised a number of considerations including the function of student evaluations to obtain feedback on the teaching effectiveness of faculty members and the influence of student evaluations on a faculty member’s promotion and retention. The committee’s research demonstrated that with respect to the latter, student evaluations negatively impacted promotion and retention of women faculty, faculty of color and especially women faculty of color. With respect to teaching effectiveness, student evaluations were instructive only insofar as they reflected significant outlier’s with respect to a professor’s perceived performance. Thus, in addition to student evaluations, LLS implements peer evaluations and self-evaluations. Peer evaluations are provided by faculty members who observe another faculty member’s inclass teaching. Self-evaluations are provided in the form of the faculty member’s annual report to the dean. In accordance with faculty governance, the LLS administration will request the appropriate faculty committee to revisit all methods of teaching evaluation to incorporate antiracist objectives.

4. Increased hiring of Black LLS administration and faculty a. LLS must hire more Black professors that are qualified to advance LLS’ antiracist initiatives in order to adequately meet the needs of the increasingly diverse student body. i. The LLS administration is committed to hiring a diverse faculty that advances LLS’s mission of educational excellence, scholarly contributions, institutional justice, social justice, anti-racism, equity and inclusion, which prioritizes the recruitment of faculty of color, especially Black and Latinx professors. Faculty hiring falls under faculty governance and is led by faculty-run hiring committees, charged with recruiting and identifying a slate of final candidates for the full faculty to consider. Information on these candidates is also shared with the full student body, including opportunities for students to interview the candidates and provide hiring committees with their feedback. The selection of candidates who receive tenure-line offers is based on the vote of LLS’s tenure-line faculty. The selection of candidates who receive clinical offers is based on the recommendation of the clinical faculty hiring committee.

For the last eight years, LLS has engaged in minimal faculty hiring. LLS recently reentered the hiring market and convened two hiring committees: the Tenure-Track Appointments Committee and the Legal Research and Writing Clinical Faculty Appointments Committee. This academic year, the Tenure-Track Appointments Committee selected eight finalists for consideration by the full faculty and student body. Among the eight finalists, there were two white candidates, three Latinx candidates and three Black candidates.

The clinical appointments committee selected five finalists for consideration by the full faculty and student body. Among the five finalists, there were three white candidates, one Latinx candidate, and one Asian candidate.

LLS also hires adjunct faculty to teach certain courses on a limited parttime basis. To ensure diverse representation among the adjunct faculty, postings of teaching opportunities are circulated to bar organizations of underrepresented groups such as the California Association of Black Lawyers, John M. Langston Bar Association, Black Women Lawyer’s Association of Los Angeles, Mexican American Bar Association, Latina Lawyers Bar Association, Latina Lawyers Bar Association, Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Los Angeles, South Asian Bar Association, Arab American Lawyers Association of Southern California, Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles and the LGBTQ Bar Association of Los Angeles.

The hiring process is still ongoing for this academic year. The outcomes of the hiring processes will be reported by May 15, 2021. b. LLS must hire at least one Black career counselor within the Career Development Office. i. The LLS administration agrees with BLSA that the addition of a new Career Development Officer must prioritize anti-racism in their work and increase the diversity in the Career Development Office (CDO).

Currently, the CDO is subject to the university-wide hiring freeze on new staff. When future counselor hiring takes place, the LLS administration will seek candidates with the experience and proven ability to address gaps in resources and support for students of color and especially Black law students. LLS and the Career Development Office welcome the feedback BLSA has provided about current gaps in resources and support that negatively impact Black law students’ experience. We are committed to addressing these gaps now by leveraging the networks and expertise of administrative leaders, alumni, faculty and the legal community, to improve career support and guidance for Black students and other students of color. We will start now, to identify internal staff

and faculty, and coordinate alumni outreach to fill these gaps. We will keep BLSA apprised of our progress in this area throughout this semester. c. LLS must be transparent regarding the institution’s hiring processes and commit to providing faculty and staff hiring data to BLSA and the broader campus community. i. LLS works with LMU’s Office of Intercultural Affairs (OIA) to publish equity scorecard data on the demographics of current LLS faculty and staff. This practice has been institutionalized and OIA will be publishing this information every year. OIA also publishes a manual for faculty hiring from which LLS’s hiring committees receive training on strategies to recruit excellent candidates who contribute to LLS’s mission of antiracism, equity and inclusion. The OIA hiring manual states in part: Colleges and universities with a predominantly white faculty drastically limit the institution’s ability to provide educational experiences that produce “an empowered, informed, and responsible student capable of negotiating the inevitable differences in a diverse society” (University of Arizona, 2006).

Conversely, an institution with a diverse faculty provides significant benefits for everyone in the campus community.

Not only can a diverse faculty prepare students to live and work an increasingly complex global society, a professoriate marked by diversity, (1) “promotes cognitive, social and emotional growth and development in students, (2) increases and raises the level of intellectual discussion with the faculty, and (3) adds multiple perspectives, theories, and approaches to scholarship and the curriculum that students consume.” (Milem & Hakuta, 2000).

Reference: Robinson-Armstrong, A. (2016). Benefits of a diverse faculty: A review of the literature. In A. Robinson-Armstrong and R. Caro, “Foundations of Recruiting and Hiring Teacher-Scholars for Mission.” Los Angeles, CA: Loyola Marymount University

While staff hiring is frozen at this time, critical teaching needs have permitted LLS to enter the faculty hiring market. LLS has a long tradition of integrating students in the faculty hiring process by notifying the full student body of when the law school is hiring for faculty positions, informing the full student body of student interview opportunities with faculty candidates and gathering student feedback on faculty candidates.

5. A commitment to the recruitment and retention of Black students a. LLS must increase recruitment efforts for Black students. i. During this academic year’s admissions cycle, LLS launched the LLSHistorically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Scholars Program, a new pipeline program to increase the enrollment of Black students in law school and in the legal profession. The program provides scholarships to

HBCU graduates with academic records and cumulative GPAs in the top 25% of their graduating class. Priority consideration is given to first generation students and students underrepresented in the legal profession.

This program initiated during the admissions cycle that is currently in process. The LLS admissions team is promoting the program in their direct recruitment efforts now. They will roll out a full marketing strategy for the next admissions cycle, that draws from LLS’s anticipated success in increasing the enrollment of Black law students for fall 2021. LLS is hopeful that the success of LLS-HBCU Scholars Program will grow in future years. b. LLS must increase scholarship offers for Black students. i. The LLS administration is committed to increasing the number of Black law students at LLS through the extension of scholarships and other recruitment methods. LLS continuously prioritizes funding and fundraising toward scholarships for new law students, especially to improve recruitment and retention of Black law students. However, LLS cannot commit to allocating an additional ten new scholarships specifically for Black law students at this time. In early fall of 2020, Dean Waterstone convened a Scholarship Task Force, which includes faculty members and administrators. The Scholarship Task Force is charged with evaluating LLS’s current scholarship criteria to consider the feasibility of modifications that prioritize anti-racism and will facilitate the increased enrollment of Black law students. The Scholarship Task Force intends to provide a memo on their evaluation and any recommendations by the end of spring semester 2021. c. LLS must create a Black Law Student Endowment Fund. i. The LLS administration, advancement office, alumni affairs and admissions are dedicated to increasing scholarship dollars, especially to recruit and retain Black law students. At this time, however, LLS has not secured a donor prospect to create a Black Law Student Endowment Fund.

Endowments require a multi-million dollar donation, depending on the amount needed from the endowment to cover the costs of the proposed program. Endowments are typically created when a donor gives a significant sum of funding (usually a minimum of $5 million), which if invested prudently, will yield approximately a 5% return annually ($250,000 from a $5 million endowment). That 5% yield needs to be enough money to cover the costs of the proposed program. The law school currently has an endowment of approximately $100 million. The annual return on the endowment last year was approximately $5 million, of which 26% was designated for scholarships, with the remaining 74% donor designated for other purposes including endowed faculty chairs, academic programs and centers. The LLS administration’s annual fundraising efforts continuously seek opportunities to create endowments

for scholarships, especially for underrepresented students. We welcome conversation with and feedback from BLSA as we persist with this effort.

6. A commitment to anti-racist campus security a. LLS’ campus security must be required to complete implicit bias and anti-racist training that is implemented immediately. i. Campus security has been mandated to receive two implicit bias trainings: one that was delivered by LMU OIA last spring, immediately preceding the county’s stay-at-home order; and the second to be delivered during Spring 2021 semester. LMU and LLS contracts with Allied Universal to provide campus security. The security company has affirmatively agreed to OIA’s mandatory implicit bias trainings, which foreground anti-racism.

b. LLS must develop a campus safety oversight committee that includes students of color to consult with the Dean responsible for security, develop harm reduction practices, and respond to complaints or suggestions from the campus community. i. LMU has launched a public safety advisory committee and has invited LLS participation in this initiative. The Associate Dean for Finance and Administration is working with the LMU Vice President of Campus Safety and Security in this effort. They are establishing an online Public Safety Feedback Form at the law school campus which will be in place in Spring of 2021. They will also invite the participation of LLS students of color on the committee. The Associate Dean for Finance and Administration will stay in communication with the EIC to provide updates and guidance in identifying LLS student representatives for the public safety advisory committee.

7. An establishment of open communication between LLS administration and BLSA a. LLS leadership must establish forms of communication that are receptive to and considerate of the Black community’s subjective beliefs and needs. i. The LLS administration has established ongoing methods of communication intended to be responsive to and considerate of LLS’s Black community. The Equity and Inclusion Committee (EIC) includes two faculty co-chairs, two associate deans and two BLSA representatives, in addition to other faculty and staff members. The EIC like other committees institutionalize communication between the administration and LLS community stakeholders. The composition of the EIC will continue to include student leaders from BLSA with future plans to add student leaders from other affinity groups. The Associate Dean for Equity and Inclusion, who serves on the EIC, ensures that anti-racism and equity and inclusion concerns remain a top consideration in all administration and faculty deliberations. The Associate Dean for Equity and Inclusion maintains open communication with student leaders from BLSA and other student organizations and is committed to raising the concerns of Black law students and the Black community at large, to faculty governance

decisions and the administration. Both the EIC and the Associate Dean for Equity and Inclusion are permanent features of LLS. 8. Additional steps toward becoming an anti-racist institution a. LLS must acknowledge Black holidays, Black leaders, Black alumni, and all significant incidents within the Black community alike. i. The LLS administration works with Student Affairs, Admissions, Alumni Affairs, Advancement and Marketing & Communications, to create programs and communications that highlight and pay tribute to Black holidays, Black leaders, Black alumni, and significant incidents in the Black community. Beginning June 19, 2020, LLS recognized Juneteenth as a significant national and campus holiday and published its LLS-Black Lives Matter website. In August of 2020, LLS instituted an annual keynote for Black August which coincides with the start of each new academic year. LLS has also created programming for Diversity Week (the name of which is required by the ABA) separate and apart from programming that pays tribute to Black History Month and other important Black leaders and holidays. The LLS administration welcomes input from students so that we can continue to improve on this front.

9. A commitment to improving community relations on campus a. LLS must make a commitment to providing space for the local community on campus consistent with its social justice and anti-racist mission. i. It is LLS’s policy to dedicate space for community events sponsored by student organizations, staff and/or faculty, that have social justice and not for profit purposes, including anti-racism. Please share any incidents with the Associate Dean of Equity and Inclusion that are inconsistent with this general policy.