Prestigious Law School Under Investigation for Alleged Reverse Discrimination

Agape Press ^ | 1/20/04 | Jim Brown and Jody Brown

[truthandlife]

The U.S. Department of Education is investigating Seton Hall Law School for allegedly discriminating against white law students.

The Department's probe is focused on a minority mentoring effort called "Partners in Excellence" and a minority job fair held by Seton Hall University. According to the Wall Street Journal, Seton Hall told students they were not allowed to attend the job fair if they were white.

The school's website, in describing the job fair, stated that "students must be eligible to participate, i.e., they must be students of color," and emphasized that the fair was "to ensure that additional opportunities were created for students of color" [emphasis in the original].

Roger Clegg, vice president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, believes the two law school programs were unconstitutional. He says in past rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it "very clear" that an across-the-board ban on students of one color or another from participating in a program is illegal.

"Needless to say, even if it weren't illegal, it would be extremely unfair to tell some students [they] are not allowed to participate in this program because [they] have the wrong skin color," the attorney adds.

According to a report in New Jersey Law Journal, the dean of Seton Hall Law School says the two programs do not discriminate against whites because they are only a small part of the school's overall career offerings, and should not be viewed in isolation. But Clegg says it is foolish for Dean Patrick Hobbs to defend the programs.

"If he's arguing that [they] have some programs for black students exclusively, and other programs for other students exclusively, then he's basically making an argument of 'separate but equal' -- which, of course, the courts rejected in Brown v. Board of Education fifty years ago," Clegg says.

Although Clegg's group is not the plaintiff in this investigation, it has filed similar complaints against schools such as MIT, Virginia Tech, and Washington University in St. Louis.

[m1-lightning]

Rewrite the title:

Prestigious Law School Under Investigation for Alleged Reverse Discrimination

There is no such thing as reverse discrimination.

[Dialup Llama]

Kinda like the recently hired Minneapolis police chief who said that he wanted his half-hispanic daughter to play with "children of her own kind," meaning other hispanic kids (in case you weren't sure which half he was referring to).

The media and Mpls political elites had absolutely no problem with this statement, not realizing how racist it really was.

[Dialup Llama]

>There is no such thing as reverse discrimination.

As Michael Savage says, "Four legs good. Two legs bad."

[longtermmemmory]

All law schools discriminate. It is just discriminating against white skin color is percieved as not having a penalty.

[BluSky]

And the circle of life continues . . .

The democrats concoct absurd legislation and/or PC upon the masses, creating lawsuit issues down the road and then their beloved trial lawyers are conscripted to mending.

Sounds like perpetual job security to me . . .

More evidence as to the ills liberalism has brought upon our country and the importance of being defeated . . . once and for all . . .

[Alberta's Child]

I'd love to hear from any lawyers here on FR about this one. I've never been under the impression that Seton Hall is a "prestigious" law school in any sense.

[CFW]

Well, I believe Seton was ranked around 70 in the 2004 rankings of first tier law schools. It's pretty well thought of.

P.S. I'm not an attorney, I just work at a law school.

[blau993]

The fact that Seton Hall itself has a minority student job fair is surprising. I wouldn't have bet that Seton Hall, or for that matter any law school, by itself would have enough participating minority students to make it worthwhile for potential employers to attend such an event.

Typically these job fairs are done on a regional basis under the auspices of the Black Law Students Association or some similar umbrella group, and they include students from multiple schools. I don't have any philosophical objection to such an arrangement. However, as a former law firm hiring partner, I must say that I never found them to be a very fertile recruiting event. The good black law students rarely participated, because they could do perfectly well as participants in their schools' normal hiring programs. What you usually saw at these regional job fairs were pretty much the dregs of the class at each of the participating schools.

[KevinB]

Seton Hall ranked 86th overall in the 2004 US News rankings. Not exactly prestigious.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Seton Hall Law School prestigious? LoL.

[Travis McGee]

Can whites still use the drinking fountains there?

[m1-lightning]

Yeah , segregation is still a voluntary act conducted by the minorities.

[BlackRazor]

Well, I believe Seton was ranked around 70 in the 2004 rankings of first tier law schools. It's pretty well thought of.

By the normal conventions, Seton Hall is considered a second tier school (out of four tiers). The first tier is generally considered the Top 50 (and that's kind of pushing it IMO).

[montag813]

Prestigious Law School Under Investigation for Alleged Reverse Discrimination

Seton Hall Law is "prestigious"? HAHAHA!

[AuntB]

Don't give them any more ideas, Travis!!!

[blau993]

The rankings referred to in various postings on this thread are most likely the Newsweek rankings. These are highly subjective and are not nearly so precise in differentiating between schools as they appear to be. For example, if one school was ranked #70 and another school was ranked #80, there could be no difference between the schools or there could be a big difference between the schools. You just can't tell, and different people knowledgable about both schools would draw different conclusions.. The rankings are based on various factors that can have some meaning in evaluating a school (size of library, test scores and grades of students, size of faculty, faculty salaries, etc.), but nobody has ever validated the conclusion that the sum total of these factors paints a meaningful picture of that school versus any other school.

Within these limitations, however, you can draw some very general conclusions. I don't think anyone in the profession would call Seton Hall a "prestigious" law school in the sense that they would put it in the same class as a Harvard or a Yale or a Stanford or a Georgetown.

[BroncosFan]

The way truly prestigious law schools fawn over minority applicants who come anywhere near the admissions benchmarks is repulsive. If you're black with good undergrad grades --even from a 4th tier college -- and mediocre to poor LSATs (155 or so), you can at least make the wait list at the top schools (HLS) and get $$$ thrown at you from some pretty darn good places (BC, Tulane). It's repulsive. The white students all know it, and in their honest moments, even discuss it. Shelby Steele was so right -- the end result is that the blacks who do get it, even if they're qualified, are always looked upon as 2nd rate.