Bulla wrote:Now we are starting to guess my race. OP is white ? No she is Asian. This is adorable.
Obviously we don't have like minds but they will show up and understand this topic. Instead of attacking the argument and the validity of it, try to see what is being unethical here and point to it. Try having a discussion about it. Obviously some are coming to NU rescue because it does interest them.
This topic was about ABA and NU along with few T14 law schools comments about diversity, innovation (don't even know how innovation is fit there, it is a term better used for medical or business schools), and admission practices.
How many of you have attended Dean Rodriguez live chat ? "Meet with a dean" Everyone of you question that NU never done this for the past years, do you wonder why now ? Did you saw the type of questions that were asked, especially from students asking questions about diversity and first generation students ? He actually said he pays more attention to them or at his direction he directs faculty to even guide them throughout their 3 years of education which is just lip service marketing.
Whether it is personal opinion or a general one, you will know that most T14 of law schools don't care about diversity and rather their ranks. Can we at least approve this because we know it is the truth. I saw some say "may be" and some are sugar coating their indirect responses.
Are you against or for diversity ?
Just because you are talking about
ethics does not mean we should blindly accept your claims or think that the actions of the NU dean are unethical. Many posters have already come here to
discuss this topic with you and those posters have made sound arguments as to why your position does not follow from your premises.
Here are a few of the main assertion and my responses:
Assertion 1: NU's dean is unethical because he says he supports diversity in the class but what he actually cares about is numbers and rankings. Every time he is talking about diversity he is doing so to intentionally deceive minority applicants with low LSAT scores to apply in order to preserve the schools rank.
Response 1: NUs dean admits that he feels pressured by the rankings to give the LSAT a lot of weight sometimes at the expense of diversity. This does not make his comments at a "Meet with a Dean" unethical or misleading. We admit, as does the dean, that the lack of diversity in law school is an ongoing issue. We also have to take into account that it is the Dean's job to make sure that the students he accepts into NU are able to both graduate and find meaningful employment. He freely admits that the focusing on LSAT scores is not always the best way to accomplish both of these goals. He also thinks that it is unfortunate that NU cannot accept every candidate that applies and that a majority of waitlisted students would most likely be really great law students. Unfortunately, the school only has a certain class size, so many students that are put on the waitlist will not be accepted despite strong evidence (GPA, LSAT, WE, etc.) that they could succeed in law school and become successful lawyers. So far, you have not fully explained how the Dean's position here is unethical. You've made a broad claim that he intentionally misleads applicants with low GPAs to apply. Your one source of evidence is a talk that you went to where he discussed inclusion and diversity and both encouraged minority students to apply and told them that he would personally make sure that they had the tools that needed to succeed at his law school. What evidence do you have that his message was meant to intentionally deceive applicants? What evidence do you have that the NU dean does not actually take the steps he claims to take? You have yet to provide this evidence, so you cannot assert that the NU dean is acting unethically.
Assertion 2: Law schools don't care about diversity at all! They only accept students with high LSAT scores, which is proof that the
only thing that matters to law schools is ranking.
Response 2: Law schools can simultaneously care about diversity and care about LSAT scores that affect their rankings. Your all-or-nothing thinking on this issue is what is so confusing. It turns out that a lot of the top schools have the luxury (if we want to call it that) of having the ability to choose a diverse class from the pool of elite applicants. As Nony pointed to above, NU has good, though not ideal, diversity in its class. It also has a high USNWR ranking in part because of its LSAT median. The Dean admits that there is still work to do when it comes to diversity in law school admissions. Most posters admit this as well. None of this evidence indicates that the NU dean and other top law schools don't care about diversity, and your continued assertion that they don't care because they accept students with high LSAT scores is baseless and wrong. Further, you have no evidence to support that your stance on diversity is entirely ethical and should be accepted on the basis of your assertion alone.
Assertion 3: If low performing students stopped applying to top law schools, the top law schools will change their mind about their admissions practices, scholarship packages, and high tuitions in favor of a more reasonable approach.
Response 3: You have neither good evidence to suggest this would work or a sound basis for thinking this would make any difference whatsoever. So Yale gets 0 applicants next year with LSATs <162...Who cares? This has some potential to affect the diversity of their class, but it also may have no effect at all seeing as there are still literally thousands of candidates to choose from with scores >162, and many of them will come from diverse backgrounds to positively contribute to their law school community.
Just because people do not accept your claims or hold you position does mean that they are unethical or against diversity, so please stop asserting as much. The validity of your arguments matters in ethical debates like this one, so do not tell us to not assess their validity or lack thereof.
