A note from the President of the Students’ Law Society
Congratulations to everyone for making it through the first month of this strange, new world! Law school is challenging in the best of times and its difficulty this year will be undeniably compounded by the impact of COVID-19. Notwithstanding the opacity of what the future holds, the Students’ Law Society (SLS) is excited to help guide our collective path.
The SLS is the student government representing all J.D. and joint program students at the Faculty of Law. The SLS has two branches: Student Affairs and Governance (StAG) and Social Affairs, comprising elected representatives from each year of study. The SLS Executive also appoints upper-year Officers: Equity Officers, Treasurers, Communications Directors, Administrative Director, Secretary, and Chief Returning Officer (CRO).
Welcome to the 1Ls
We are so excited to have you join the Faculty of Law this year! Having only engaged with a handful of you, I am already so inspired by your commitment to education, accessibility, and community, all amid a pandemic. Your resilience in the face of adversity and your optimism about this new path is genuinely heartwarming. This might not be the law school experience that you expected, but I am confident that you will all grow stronger through it.
A special shoutout on behalf of the SLS and the 1L class to the students who organized Orientation Week: Branden Cave, Thryn Irwin, and Meruba Sivaselvachandran. Orientation is difficult enough to organize without COVID-19-inspired considerations, but these three students rose to the occasion and organized a wonderfully engaging and eventful two weeks. From an in-person Amazing Race to a virtual murder mystery, the Orientation team really gave it their all and it showed.
Welcome to the transfer students
A quick welcome as well to the nine new 2L students who will be joining us from law schools across North America! Your external perspectives on our law school will be highly useful in the ways that the SLS evaluates the Faculty’s course and service offerings. I hope that you are made to feel at home in this new environment, and we can’t wait to get to know you.
Summer updates: COVID-19 hasn’t stopped our advocacy party
COVID-19 may have shut down many parties, but the SLS has not let it rain on our parade. This summer, we have been more active than ever in both our advocacy and our preparation for the upcoming year.
Our advocacy so far has largely focused on addressing issues related to course selection and course accessibility. The SLS heard numerous concerns about the implications of COVID-19 on the ways that courses are allocated and delivered, which allowed us to petition the administration and instructors to address these topics. We are glad to see that most course selection issues have been addressed, but we are continuing to monitor the various facets of course accessibility (i.e., lecture recording and the online vs in-person experience).
Additionally, we have been working with the Law Students’ Society of Ontario (LSSO), which represents all law students across Ontario (like the SLS but province-wide). Our work with the LSSO has involved our support of a motion brought to the Law Society of Ontario (LSO) by Morgan Watkins (U of T JD 2020, SLS President 2019-20) and Karen Mann (Osgoode JD 2020, LSSO President 2019-20). The motion requests that (1) law students be represented at the LSO and (2) articling students be voting members of the LSO. As the regulatory board of many processes that affect us—including law school accreditation and recruitment—we have a right to be at the table.
In preparing for the 2020-21 academic year, we have compiled three SLS Guides for the general law school, 1Ls, and transfer students. We have also organized a synchronous clubs fair to complement the Faculty’s asynchronous one, instituted a mostly centralized club sign-up form, seen the creation of the public interest programs’ joint volunteer recruitment process (a product of 2019-20 SLS advocacy), and much more.
In addition to some governance updates with which we won’t bore you, you’ll also note that the SLS has a brand-new look! Students this summer came together to provide input into our new logo. Not only do we now look better, but we’ve updated our website to match. As always, it’s full of useful information about the SLS members, elections, and the oh-so-critical study materials page.
SLS Priorities
As we move forward past elections with a full slate of SLS Members and Officers, we have two main goals in mind this year.
1. Equity and Accessibility
COVID-19 will impact our students in many unexpected ways, but accessibility does not need to compound that uncertainty. We have already seen a strong desire from students for improved accessibility at the Faculty of Law; however, lecture recordings are but one facet of the work that we will be doing to improve accessibility. We also intend to revisit the accommodations process for improved clarity on how students can navigate this space for one-off requests and longer-term needs. Additionally, we will be continuing our work on tuition, being mindful of the financial and economic impacts of COVID-19, the Ford government’s tuition cut/freeze ending this year, and Dean Iacobucci’s term ending on December 31, 2020.
In light of reduced social opportunities, we have reduced our Fall term fee and will re-evaluate our Winter term fee in due course. As well, we are continuing to consider the interplay of funding and equity-based considerations. We have heard from equity-facing groups that the commitment to equity cannot fall on the shoulders of those groups that are affected, and we agree. We will continue implementing a commitment to equity through different SLS processes, including meetings, clubs funding, and student leader training.
2. Community building
If there was ever a time to be an events planner, now would not be it. Nonetheless, the Social Affairs Committee is dedicated to finding new and exciting ways of creating community within the law school. Things won’t look the same as they have in the past (pour one out for Call to the Bar) but we are striving to provide the best experience possible and are excited to share some of our event plans with you. At the very least, we’re excited to have our full school together, instead of the 80 or so 3Ls who would currently be studying hard on exchange.
However, the burden of community-building does not have to fall entirely on the SLS. In fact, we have already seen students come together to fight for important causes. This summer, students and alumni wrote letters and built groups about implementing a mandatory course on Indigenous peoples and Aboriginal law (as requested by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action #28), about the LSO and #blackouttuesday, about the Faculty’s obligation to dismantle white supremacy and anti-Black racism at the Faculty, about recording lectures, about supporting Black Canadians, and more. As we move through this odd time, we must remember that we have the power to come together and effect change. Community is not only built through socializing, but can also be built through serving a common purpose.
I cannot anticipate what this year might look like, but I am so proud of what we have all done already. If we continue along this path, I have high hopes for this year full of novel challenges and unexpected obstacles. I’m looking forward to working with the newly filled SLS—and with all of you—to make this a year to remember for all the right reasons.
Robert Nanni
President of the Students’ Law Society 2020-21
Editor’s note: this article was updated on October 7. An abridged version of this letter was initially published in print on October 1, and online on October 5.
