This year’s theme, Connecting to Community, Healing & Joy: Why the Law?, grew roots and came alive entirely online
This guest post was written by the Law School’s new Director of Student Affairs, Amanda Wright, after she experienced her first incoming student orientation shortly after joining the administration.
This year’s 1L class experienced Orientation in a completely virtual realm. Students, faculty, and staff navigated the onset of a new academic journey in a remote and digitized world. The way that we get to know someone no longer begins with a physical greeting, and maintaining eye contact is difficult while you are looking into your webcam and computer screen at the same time (“You’re still on mute” has become the official catchphrase of 2020). These both drastic and subtle changes to the way we work together and create community are aptly reflected in this year’s Orientation theme exploring the ways that we need to balance our needs and the needs of others.
For all these reasons, I found it a felicitous gesture that orientation commenced with a workshop titled “The Art of Listening,” where Professor Julie Goldscheid, along with CUNY Arts and Jazz at Lincoln Center, led the attendees on a transformative exploration to uncover how we can listen differently and deeply. With many of our lives starved for art, the messages in this session have never felt more potent, as we find ourselves listening in fresh new ways, honing attention skills, attempting to become “indistractable” beings, maneuvering through working, learning, being, and serving from home. You can find the playlist created for the workshop here.
Throughout orientation, Student Affairs hoped to plant the seeds of togetherness; I noticed the first roots when, at the conclusion of this first session, incoming student Kelly Folkers said, “A choir can hold a note much longer than an individual.” I observed this sentiment threaded throughout orientation as incoming students embraced their new community. In fact, when I told students I was writing 500 words on orientation, they said, “do not forget to include the choir quote. It sums up everything.”
On-boarding as the newest member of the Student Affairs team just a week before orientation began, I feel an affinity to this year’s class. I admire their tenacity and malleability, as they pursue their legal education in uncertain times. I am also extremely hopeful as, now more than ever, we need lawyers with the power to listen, heal themselves and our community, and leverage the law as an engine for change.