The Student Bar Association unanimously voted to endorse GW’s first public interest law journal at a meeting Tuesday night.
SBA senators endorsed the Justice, Rights & Policy Journal, which a group of students developed to give GW Law students a platform to write articles about public interest topics, like civil rights, human rights and environmental law. Minnie Nelson, a law student who presented to the body as a representative of the journal, said while GW currently has 10 law journals, none of them focus on public interest despite the school’s public interest law program.
“We think that there’s a big gap in the content area for students to write about,” Nelson said. “Additionally, it’ll provide an opportunity for practitioners to write about emerging public interest politics.”
Lara Montoya Franco, a law student involved in developing the journal, said a petition to launch the journal garnered 343 signatures from students last year but did not receive support from a “curriculum committee,” which presides over all of the journals at the law school. Last year’s SBA Senate also endorsed the JRPJ when students from the journal presented to the body at a March senate meeting.
She said this year they have received more than 420 signatures from students and hosted a town hall earlier this year to place “pressure” on law school officials to consider approving the journal this semester.
The SBA Senate unanimously passed a financial reform act, which aims to ensure timely budget allocation for student organizations and streamline the SBA’s finance process. Omer Turkomer, who sponsored the bill, presented similar finance reform legislation at an October SBA Senate meeting, which the body ultimately sent back to the committee for further review because of extensive demands on Amanda Hichez, the executive vice president of finance, to present a line item budget request to the body.
“We kind of boiled this down to ‘okay, what are some of the small changes we can make that are going to have a huge impact,’” Turkomer said.
Turkomer said the new bill will require the SBA Senate to begin the budget allocation process in the spring semester instead of the fall, which he said will give the SBA more time to consider student organizations’ funding requests. He said the change will mirror the Student Government Association’s budgeting schedule, which allocates funding to student organizations in the spring semester for the following year.
The SBA Senate also unanimously approved the Comparative Law Association as a new law school organization. Enya Stephan, a law school student and representative from the Comparative Law Association, said comparative law studies how laws compare across countries or internally among branches of a singular government.
Stephan said the organization has planned several activities, like an event at the German Embassy where students will have the opportunity to compare U.S. and German constitutional law with German officials.
“One of our first events we’d like to do is to explain what comparative law is, to kind of raise awareness, to just get more people into it,” Stephan said. “That’s why I think it’s important to have the backup of this association.”
Kim Moughler, the director and president of GW Law Revue — an annual musical and sketch show hosted by law school students — said the University-Wide Program Fund rejected their funding request for their upcoming show with “no explanation.” In a presentation to the body Moughler said with no funding, Law Revue is unable to rent Lisner Auditorium for their Feb. 21 show.
Moughler said the UWPF — an SGA and GW Office of Student Life joint fund which offers student organizations funding for school-wide events — provided $10,000 to Law Revue last year to host their event. She said this year’s lack of funding has left Law Revue about $8,400 short, rendering them unable to fund their event.
“We’re not receiving the level of support that we should be from the University at large,” Moughler said. “Every law student has paid money into UWPF, yet none of us are seeing a single penny.”
Moughler said Law Revue is talking with officials from the Office of Student Life to appeal the decision but if they do not receive funding they will request the money from the SBA at the body’s next meeting.
SBA senators approved $1810 in funding across five ad-hoc bills for law school students to attend upcoming law conferences.
The next SBA meeting will be held Feb. 25 in the LLC at 8:50 p.m.
