This article comes to us courtesy of U.S. News & World Report, where it was originally published.
When Robert Grey attended law school at Washington and Lee University, connecting with his classmates was not easy.
“I was the fourth person of color to graduate from the school in 1976,” says Grey, who is African-American and now the president of the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity. “It was tough.”
The school’s faculty also wasn’t diverse, he says.
His experience at the Virginia school was likely similar to other minorities in law school in the 1970s. During the 1975-1976 school year, for example, 7.8 percent of students were minorities at schools approved by the American Bar Association.
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He believes schools these days are much more focused on minorities than they were when he was in school, and Valparaiso may be a reflection of that.
The school has made a conscious effort over the years to increase diversity, Lyon says. Of the students who are underrepresented minorities, about half are black, she says.
“This is the world in which we live,” Lyon says. “And we need to reflect and engage with the world in which we live.”
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