diversity

A tale of intersectionality, or that one summer where Nicki Minaj was right about a lot of things

/ Charlene Ochogo / Leave a comment

I don’t consider pop artists to be role models, because, really, that’s not their job. Their job is to create music or act or…whatever it is Kim Kardashian does, and rarely do we care what they think about social justice issues.

So color me surprised when this summer I realized that Nicki Minaj’s social media skirmish was actually doing an awesome job of illustrating an issue most people don’t even really think about: intersectionality.

Before we get started to the juicy celebrity drama, let’s get some definitions out of the way. Quite simply, intersectionality is the study of how different forms of discrimination intersect. And a feminist is a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. Easy, right?

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What privilege and Mario Kart have in common

/ Charlene Ochogo / 2 Comments

I’m going to take a tiny detour from my Things I Wish I Knew series to address something that came up this week for me and that most of us are guilty of forgetting in one form or another: privilege.

Now this is where I expose my inner geek. One of my absolute favorite things to do in college was to have people over and play the game that has been ruining friendships since the 90s: Mario Kart. Remember when you were all set to win the race, and you’d drive through an item box and it would roulette through all the different items before it landed on the one you got – usually something useless like a banana peel, because unless one of your fellow racers beat you out in the last second, chances are you’d be crossing the finish line first.

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Seachanges and Drag Queens

/ mptierney / Leave a comment

With the current state of the world, Environmental Law is only going to get bigger. At BC Law, there’s no question that we’re at the tip of the spear on a number of pressing environmental legal initiatives. Our environmental law review, Environmental Affairs, is the second oldest and most subscribed such journal in the country. Our professors of environmental law are luminaries in their field. And our student run Environmental Law Society boasts a proud, longstanding tradition of meaningful social and academic engagement. This January, the Environmental Law Society made a trip down to Provincetown as part of its annual Winter Weekend excursion.

Winter Weekend is tough to capture. It’s part lecture series, part bonding adventure, and recently, part drag karaoke jam fest. Let me explain. For the last three years, the Environmental Law Society has journeyed down to P-Town, famous for that old Cape magic, not to mention the town’s established LGBT community.  Law students come to learn from great speakers, enjoy the best seafood, and croon a Journey song or two with the locally famous Dana Danzel II.

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Things I Wish I Knew, Vol. 2: Your story matters

/ Charlene Ochogo / 1 Comment

What the frack am I going to write my personal statement about?

A thought that has probably haunted many a person reading this for the past few months. And even after you’re done writing it, you have to read it, which is a lot like hearing your own voice on camera – i.e., “Gross. Do I really sound like that?” Even worse, you have to get someone else to read it to catch the typos and confusing tangents. And most people fall into one of two categories: the ones who tell you it’s perfect and not to change a thing (thanks, Mom!) and the ones who basically tell you to rewrite the whole thing.

To say that I was nervous about submitting my personal statement to BC is kind of like saying Boston got a few snow showers this past month. Race is such a sensitive topic of discussion, and I felt like I was really throwing caution to the wind in dedicating my entire admissions essay to the subject, but I couldn’t help it – it didn’t make sense to me to write about anything else. Then when I got the request to publish it in BC Law Magazine, I was even more anxious. I typed the confirmation email quickly and hit “send” before I could change my mind.

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Racial Justice, Law, and Doing More

/ Amelia M. Wirts, Esq. / 2 Comments
Die In

Photo of the student organized BLACK LIVES MATTER – A Demonstration of Solidarity @ BC Law Event. Photo by Laura Partamian

Her voice was quivering, but she was still shouting. That’s what I remember most about the young woman in front of me. I could almost feel the sting of disrespect as she described her face being shoved against a brick wall by a police officer. I couldn’t help but relate to her — a graduate student in her 20s, pulling off the hipster look much better than I can. The difference between us was that she is black and I am not. That difference meant that she had spent her life in fear of law enforcement, treated like a criminal when she wasn’t one.

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