Postponing of Student Event Reflects ‘Culture of Intimidation’ at Law School

Loyola’s School of Law introduced a new policy Oct. 1 prohibiting law student organizations from holding events over the mid-semester break Oct. 7-8, forcing them to postpone multiple events on short notice in what several student leaders alleged was deliberate targeting of student organizations.

Students were notified of the policy less than a week before events were scheduled to take place Oct. 7 and 8, the dates of the undergraduate university’s fall break. The School of Law doesn’t observe the mid-semester break.

An Oct. 8 Instagram post from the Muslim Law Students Association accused the law school of suppressing Arab, Palestinian and Muslim law students as a vigil memorializing Palestinians killed in Gaza was originally scheduled in September for Oct. 7, and had to be rescheduled for Oct. 9, The Phoenix reported.

Leanna Nichols, president of the Public Interest Law Society who co-hosted the vigil alongside MLSA and eight other law student organizations, called the sudden implementation of the policy, “blatant discrimination based on both race and religion.”

In an Oct. 3 email to Law School Dean Michèle Alexandre, Nichols requested clarity on the new policy and detailed her concern about possible suppression of students going against Loyola’s Jesuit mission.

“I fear that there will be grave repercussions for Loyola and its reputation if students are suppressed in this way,” Nichols wrote to the Dean. “You are educating us to become advocates and critical thinkers, and therefore, the student body correctly sees this attempt to silence us as nothing more than thinly veiled racism hiding behind a bureaucratic facade.”

Ashton Yeh is president of Loyola’s Student Bar Association, an elected body of students who act as intermediary between the student body and administration and advocate for student concerns with administration. Yeh said they also emailed Alexandre following the initial notice asking for a thorough explanation of the guidelines.

In their email to the Dean, Yeh wrote the policy seemed arbitrarily applied and they hoped it wasn’t being used to unfairly target students. They said this would be contrary to Loyola’s mission to provide a space for students to be ethical advocates for justice.

Christian Anderson, assistant vice-president for communication, provided The Phoenix a statement on behalf of Vice President for Student Development Keith Champagne, Dean of Students Will Rodriguez and Assistant Vice President for Diversity and Student Engagement Astrid Beltrán and Alexandre.

“As we care for our whole community, Loyola supports the free speech rights of students and crafts policies to provide space for protest while prioritizing health and safety and continuity of programming,” Anderson wrote. “Feedback from students and faculty helps us clarify policies and ensure consistent application and communication.”

Yeh said they’d also heard rumors someone reached out to the university asking for the event to be shut down.

Nichols said it seemed to her the administration originally approved the vigil to avoid an argument then waited until the last minute to announce the policy when there was little time to fix things, she acknowledged her claims rely more on hearsay than evidence. 

She said she thinks this is because people at the law school — including faculty, staff and herself — are scared of retaliation from Alexandre.

“No faculty has said this to us openly, no one, no faculty is feeding into any misinformation, or for this culture of intimidation or anything,” Nichols said. “It’s more we can tell, we can see on the face of professors, we can see when they’re choosing their words so carefully that they’re tiptoeing around something. And we can only assume they’re tiptoeing around their boss.”

The evening of Oct. 1, Assistant Dean of Student Services Anita Maddali sent out emails to law school student organizations who had scheduled events over the undergraduate mid-semester break.

“In speaking with the university, we have been informed that no programming (except classes) can occur during the university’s fall break, which, this year, occurs on October 7th and October 8th,” Maddali wrote. “We were not aware that this prohibition also applied to graduate programs, but have been informed of the language that is on page 8 of the attached Graduate Student Handbook.”

Page eight of the Graduate, Professional, & Adult Student Life Organizational Handbook specifies graduate sponsored student organizations can’t hold any programming “during University breaks, holidays, finals or the summer.” According to page six of the handbook, a student organization gets classified as SSO’s if it’s linked with a university department and their financial resources come directly from a university department. 

Assistant Vice President for Diversity and Student Engagement Astrid Beltrán responded to an inquiry from the heads of the various co-hosts of the Oct. 9 vigil in an Oct. 3 letter alongside Rodriguez.

In the letter, Beltrán wrote all student organizations affiliated with and supported by graduate and professional schools are classified as SSOs, which would include organizations in the Law School, according to the Sponsored Student Organization Handbook.

When Beltrán cited the Sponsored Student Organization Handbook in the letter, she linked to the Graduate, Professional, & Adult Student Life Organizational Handbook: Sponsored Student Organizations.

The 10 law student organizations who co-organized the Oct. 9 vigil aren’t funded by the School of Law, but instead receive funding from the Student Bar Association Budget Committee which distributes shares of the Student Development Fee to the various organizations, according to Yeh.

This fee is charged to all undergraduate and graduate students during the fall and spring semesters and is used to fund several services including shuttle and 8-ride programs, but a portion of the fee is returned to students for funding of clubs and organizations, according to the Office of the Bursar’s website.

Just before 9 a.m. Oct. 2, Yeh emailed Rodriguez clarifying how law school organizations aren’t SSOs because they aren’t linked to a university department and receive funding from their tuition as allocated by the student-selected committee. Yeh said they never received a response to this email.

The next day, Oct. 3, Yeh emailed Alexandre regarding the announcement and pointed out the law school was still holding classes Oct. 7-8 despite the mid-semester break because the law school doesn’t observe it.

“On my end, it is unreasonable to expect students to accommodate the SSO Handbook when these guidelines have not been raised to us until a week before our event nor enforced throughout my three years at law school,” Yeh wrote to Alexandre.

The mid-semester break for the Fall 2023 semester was Oct. 9-10, according to the university academic calendar. Four law school student organization and student events occurred over fall break last year, according to the Oct. 6, 2023 announcements.

Those events were SBA Club Congress Oct. 9, 2023, Delivering Justice During Wartime and the Role of the High Anti-corruption Court of Ukraine Oct. 10, 2023, Gaetano Filangieri and Benjamin Franklin Correspondence: Dialogue Between Italy and the USA Oct. 10, 2023 and Health Justice Project Open House Oct. 10, 2023.

In the Oct. 3 letter to law students, Beltrán wrote the Sponsored Student Organization Handbook was incorporated into the School of Law Student Handbook during this year’s annual review of the SSO handbook. Beltrán also said both the additional policies and SSO handbook were included and linked within the Law School Handbook during the review.

The School of Law Student Handbook doesn’t mention either policies regarding main university breaks or the SSO handbook. The School of Law Student Organization Handbook also makes no mention of a no-events policy over main campus breaks in its Event Planning, Event Policies or Event Considerations sections.

The law school student organization handbook does say law student organizations “are also subject to the policies outlined in the Loyola University Chicago Student Handbook” but links to the School of Law Student Handbook and not the SSO one.

“In closing, we want to emphasize that this is not a new ‘policy’ that was developed and implemented without prior notice and/or a sound rationale,” Beltrán wrote. “Nor is this policy being applied arbitrarily and capriciously by the Division of Student Development to negatively impact our students and/or University recognized and sponsored student organizations.”

Anderson wrote ongoing work between the Center for Student Engagement and various schools to align student organization policies with the university SSO and registered student organization handbooks, and is the result of a two-year audit which found an urgent need to standardize policies.

“Loyola is in the midst of a university-wide effort to align and consistently apply policies regarding student organizations and events, and recent confusion around scheduling events during fall break is an example of what this work aims to address,” Anderson wrote. “While graduate and professional programs do not all observe fall break, the hiatus on student events during break applies across campuses and schools.”

Club Congress is a twice-semester event hosted by the Student Bar Association where student leaders from organizations across the law school gather to discuss their upcoming events and any other concerns, according to Yeh. Participation in Club Congress is recommended in the School of Law Student Organization Handbook for organizations to stay in good standing.

This semester, the two dates for Club Congress were Sept. 10 and Oct. 8. These dates were decided in early August, according to Yeh. Both dates for Club Congress were included in the School of Law Student Organization Handbook which was released as early as July 19, according to Yeh. The Oct. 8 congress had to be rescheduled.

The Judge Thomas Tang and Dr. Pearl Tang Moot Court team was originally scheduled to practice Oct. 7 and 8, and the National Health Law team was scheduled for practice on Oct. 8 before receiving the Oct. 1 notice prohibiting programming, according to Moot Court Community Director Maris Medina. 

She said the Moot Court board was notified the individual teams had booked these practices on Sept. 4 for National Health Law and Oct. 1 for Thomas Tang.

Moot Court is both a class and nationally competitive team which simulates appellate advocacy, as opposed to trial, and currently has around 60 members across multiple teams, according to moot court Community Director Maris Medina.

MLSA initially requested a room to hold the vigil in Sept. 15 then made a subsequent request for a larger room Sept. 27, according to the Oct. 8 MLSA Instagram post. MLSA posted a flyer advertising the upcoming vigil to their Instagram Sept. 30, according to the same post, while several other co-organizers like the Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, National Lawyers Guild and Loyola Defense Coalition posted Oct. 1.

Sixteen days after booking the room, one day after first announcing the event and with less than a week before it was scheduled to occur, MLSA received the Oct. 1 notice from Student Services prohibiting programming over the mid-semester break.

In addition to Club Congress, Moot Court practices and the vigil, a Student Services 1L curriculum planning was rescheduled to Wednesday, a Oct. 7 Health Justice Project information session was postponed to Oct. 14 and an Oct. 8 Rodin Center lunch and learn was delayed to Oct. 22, according to Yeh and Kate Mitchell, director of both the Health Justice Project and the Curt and Linda Rodin Center for Social Justice.

Following the initial notice Oct. 2, Moot Court’s Chief Justice Iris Gomez spoke with the Center for Advocacy at the law school about getting an exemption to continue holding practices since they’re a class and not an SSO, according to Medina.

After receiving the okay to have practice from the center, Gomez emailed the various competition team leaders Oct. 2 informing them they were allowed to have their scheduled practices Oct. 7-8.

The next day, in the Oct. 3 letter responding to various student organization leaders asking for clarification on the policy, Beltrán wrote exemptions weren’t provided to moot court or any other organizations with student participation. Yeh followed up the next day and attached a PDF copy of Gomez’s email to the moot court members telling them they had an exemption.

Medina said Center for Advocacy ultimately repealed their exemption Oct. 4 and told moot court they also couldn’t hold practices over the mid-semester break.

Yeh said they are advocating for a revision to this policy since the law school operates on a different schedule to the main university and has events over breaks because they’re in session over those dates.

“Barely anybody followed up with us,” Yeh said. “It was just like, ‘Here you go, this is a new policy, not a new policy, but here you go. Here’s the policy, deal with it.’ And  it felt like we were left scrambling on our own. And it felt like when we were trying to raise questions, people were trying to brush us off. So, once again the burden fell on students to really advocate for themselves.”