Sheep From the Goats

Apparently one of my duties as the incoming 3L President of the pubic interest society is to assist in the selection process for grants for this academic year. We’ve had a great deal of interest this year, far more than last year (and I think more than the year before that, but I wasn’t here, so I don’t know for sure). So first we’ll have to pare the applicants down for interviews. Sometime today, I’m supposed to get a packet of all applications for the grants to read through and evaluate.

I can hardly wait to read a bunch of essays from people who say things like “I think the public interest society is a great group. I really wish that I could help out, but I just have too much studying to do.” It won’t land on very sympathetic ears—I’m busy too, and so is every other member of the public interest society. There are people in the group who have jobs, who are married or who have children, plus manage to fit both studying and work in the public interest society into their schedule. Especially given the fact that there are lots of opportunities to give just a couple of hours of time to the group. And then there are the people who say things like “I am soooo dedicated to working in public interest law”, but have done zero volunteer work to back this up (including working with the public interest society, which, again, allows for people to give just a little bit of time).

I hope (and I would think, based on the amazing group of 1Ls who worked so hard with the public interest society this year) that there are going to be a sufficient number of good applicants with worthwhile projects to make the awarding of grants meaningful. I don’t think we should give out money just because we have money. I’d rather set some of it aside for funding an LRAP program or even just saving to award next year.

In the past, I was on the selection committee for a scholarship to study abroad. Every year, I was amazed at the quality of the applicants. Usually, there were 8 or 10 kids vying for 2 or 3 slots. One or two of them would normally be clearly not the right choice, and occasionally there would be one applicant who was far and away the best of the group. But one year, we had the opposite situation. Applications were down that year and the resulting pool for the interview was definitely sub-par. The deliberations at the end of the day were painful. There was only one student a majority of the committee felt comfortable awarding the scholarship. It was a great relief to learn that we were permitted to return the funds for the other two slots to the “pot. Because the scholarship was nationwide, but each state was responsible for selecting its own awardees, that meant that another deserving student would get the chance to participate in the program who would otherwise have been excluded for the bad luck of living in a state with better applicants.

This is how I think things should be. I guess we’ll find out how things are.