Race, Diversity, Law: Rutgers Minority Student Program Turns 50

NEWARK, NJ — The Newark Rebellion of 1967 has left its mark on the city – and the nation – in many ways. But one of the longest-lasting effects of those turbulent days has turned out to be one of the most positive: the Minority Student Program at Rutgers University.

April 14 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Minority Student Program (MSP), a first-of-its kind effort to “racially diversify the legal profession,” according to Rutgers Law School.

The evidence of the program’s effectiveness can be seen across New Jersey. Some of its graduates include:

• U.S. Senator Robert Menendez
• Rutgers Law School Dean Ronald Chen
• U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas
• Passaic County Prosecutor Camelia Valdes

In all, the MSP at Rutgers has about 2,500 alumni, all men and women of color and/or from “disadvantaged backgrounds.”

As part of the 50th anniversary celebration, Rutgers Law School will hold an event at 11 a.m. on Saturday, April 14, at 15 Washington Street in Newark, the renovated former law school building. (Learn more and purchase tickets here)

According to the law school, the event will include:

• MSP student panel with current students talking about their experiences.
• Former MSP deans recalling the challenges they faced during their tenures
• Remarks by Rutgers University-Newark Chancellor Nancy Cantor
• Faculty panel discussing ongoing social justice initiatives
• MSP Alumni career discussion

The event moves to the Robert Treat Hotel for an evening program, including cocktails at 6 p.m., dinner at 7 p.m., a program including annual student awards and a keynote address by Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, followed by live music and dancing.

The following history of the MSP comes courtesy of Rutgers Law School. Don’t forget to visit the Patch Newark Facebook page here.

'BORN OF STRIFE, WITH HOPE FOR A BETTER FUTURE'

"The Minority Student Program was born 50 years ago, in 1968, out of strife and dissatisfaction, but with hope for a better future. The 1967 rebellions in Newark, Detroit and other American cities planted the seeds, and the national and state responses nurtured the embryonic development. This was both a painful time and one of heightened aspirations for Americans and New Jerseyans of color.

"Rutgers Law School in Newark was at the eye of the storm. It occupied a relatively new building in downtown Newark on the developing Rutgers-Newark campus. In a sense, it was of the city and had been since its predecessor law schools were first established there in 1908.

"From the start, its student body differed from those of most American law schools of the day, reflecting immigrant groups, those whose families didn’t have a tradition of attending schools of higher education, and even women at a time when that was unheard of in legal education.

"But the Rutgers Law faculty and student body of the 1960s bore little resemblance to the emerging population of Newark. Both faculty members and students were overwhelmingly white and male. The law school was a highly visible white bastion in an increasingly black city. Indeed, Ackerson Hall, its new home on University Avenue, looked rather like a fortress designed to protect its inhabitants against hostile forces outside.

"The events of 1967 could have led Rutgers Law to turn even more inward, away from the city outside its walls. The wonder is that that did not happen. A major part of the credit goes to the handful of black students in attendance at the law school and at the undergraduate program on the Rutgers-Newark campus. They used various tactics, some of them highly confrontational such as the takeover of Conklin Hall by the undergraduate Black Organization of Students and the formal indictment of the law school by the Association of Black Law Students (ABLS), to force the rest of the Rutgers community to confront complex and difficult issues.

"Fortunately, they found some kindred spirits on the faculty and in the law school and university administration. First among them was the law school’s dean Willard Heckel, a champion of human and civil rights. Heckel was the head of Newark’s anti-poverty agency, the United Community Corporation, and the national moderator of the Presbyterian Church. In the late 1960s, he led the law school forward to confront the challenges of the day with kindness, calmness and decency, but also with forceful leadership.

"To understand the scope of the challenges the law school faced then, you need to know that in 1967 of 2,500 undergraduate students at Rutgers-Newark, only 62 were black—and just a few years earlier there were only 20. At the law school, the situation was no better. Between 1960 and 1967, a total of only 12 nonwhite students graduated. Since Rutgers Law School was a major preparer of New Jersey lawyers, it was hardly surprising that, as of 1969, there were fewer than 60 African-American attorneys among 8,000 lawyers practicing in the state, and even fewer Hispanic and Asian-American attorneys.

"The Minority Student Program was the most direct response to that gross imbalance, but it was only one aspect of the law school’s transformation in the late 1960s. The curriculum was overhauled, clinical education got a more secure foothold at Rutgers Law than at most law schools, and a schoolwide commitment was made to imbue all students with a determination to use law to advance the public good.

"In the spring of 1968, the faculty of Rutgers Law School in Newark voted to implement a plan for admitting black students starting that fall—the Minority Student Program or MSP. As described in A Centennial History of Rutgers Law School in Newark: Opening a Thousand Doors:

"The plan was to reserve 20 seats for black students of a total of 150 in the entering class. Actually, that September, 23 black students were admitted under the special program standard [of the Minority Student Program]. Two months later, in November 1968, the school committed itself to a five-year “plan to double the number of negro and minority group attorneys in the state of New Jersey. The plan [would] cost $498,400, mainly for scholarships” and would seek to graduate at least one hundred black students over the five years.

"Despite the law school’s commitment to the MSP—or perhaps because of it, by the fall of 1969 the fledgling ABLS moved boldly to reshape Rutgers Law, and, with it, American legal education. On November 4, 1969, ABLS published a detailed “Indictment of the Law School Community,” pressing for a total overhaul of the law school curriculum and for a plan to attract more African-American students and faculty. Strikingly, the Indictment came on the heels of the law school having acted in 1968 to expand the curriculum to include courses and seminars such as Legal Representation of the Poor, Social Legislation, Urban Poverty, and Consumer Credit and the Poor. But the ABLS Indictment made the case for why that was not enough because the curriculum still protected “the private interests of white society…far more thoroughly…than the private interests of Black people.”

"The very next day, November 5, 1969, the law school cancelled all classes and convened a day of deliberation at which the faculty, student body and administration would consider the ABLS Indictment. An immediate result was the establishment of a Tripartite Commission comprised of three members each representing the ABLS, the Student Bar Association and the faculty to address the Indictment.

"Six months later, on May 6, 1970, the Tripartite Commission issued its “Strategy for Change,” which recommended far-reaching changes in the way the law school operated. This included major curricular changes, such as the development of extensive clinical education programs. The Tripartite Commission urged that the changes be put in place immediately and that an Implementation Task Force be created. That very day, the entire law school community voted to approve the Strategy for Change. And substantial change did come to the law school, perhaps not to the full extent envisioned by the Tripartite Commission, but still to a degree unprecedented in American legal education.

"In the years between 1970 and 1978, Rutgers Law School and the MSP flowered. Among the major gardeners were professors Frank Askin and Alfred Slocum. Both were Rutgers law graduates and devoted supporters of the MSP from its start—or even before. To a very real extent, they planted and nourished the seeds

"Those were the incredibly exciting years of the “People’s Electric Law School,” and the initial influx of students of color grew apace. As early as 1971, about 20% of the law school’s student body consisted of black students. In short order, the target increased to 25% and was achieved, and the program was expanded to include other students of color.

"To maintain its momentum, Rutgers Law School and the MSP had to overcome two major challenges in the next 20 years—the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1978 decision in the Bakke case and an Office for Civil Rights (OCR) inquiry in 1997. Either could have signaled the end of MSP, but neither did. Either could have resulted in the law school defending MSP as it was then constituted “to the death,” but in both cases the law school thought “outside of the box” and reacted counter-intuitively. And in both instances, the law school community responded as it had in 1968 and 1969, as a broad community of faculty, students and administrators whose collective priority was to find a way to save the important program it had so daringly created in the 60s and nurtured thereafter.

"When the U.S. Supreme Court’s divided decision in Bakke struck down “racial quotas” or “set-asides” as unconstitutional, but permitted race to be used as a “plus factor” in an otherwise racially neutral process, many universities and law schools reacted by paring back, if not eliminating, their affirmative action efforts. Rutgers Law’s ingenious response was embodied in a faculty resolution that was adopted by a vote of 34-3. It provided: “That the current Minority Student Program be expanded to 30% [of the entering class] and that the term ‘minority’ be understood to include disadvantaged whites.”

"Then, in 1997 OCR contacted Rutgers in connection with a complaint it had received about the law school’s two-track admissions system. By then, the law had changed to call into question such an admissions approach. Still, there were those who wanted to tough it out, believing that the law school’s admissions system could be successfully defended. The weight of faculty opinion had shifted, however, to the view that we had to move to a single-track admissions system.

"The challenge, however, one presented to a special study committee co-chaired by Professors Paul Tractenberg and Charles Jones, was to identify a single-track system that could maintain both the law school’s impressive student diversity profile and its numerical index based on LSAT scores and UGPA. To many, this seemed like “Mission Impossible.”

"Once again, though, Rutgers Law ingenuity carried the day. The simple idea that won overwhelming faculty support—proposed by MSP Dean Janice Robinson on behalf of a literally speechless Professor Tractenberg (he had laryngitis)--was to add two boxes to the application for admission. This allowed each applicant, regardless of race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status, to indicate whether he or she preferred to have either numerical or non-numerical factors be treated as the strongest indicator of admissibility to the law school. That weighting preference was honored although every applicant was evaluated based on all the factors presented in the application.

"The result of this approach was to create a single track admissions system with multiple members of the admissions committee, including the MSP dean, reviewing all applications. Race was one of many factors considered in the law school’s in-depth, holistic review of all applications. The Minority Student Program has continued as a vibrant and popular post-admission support system for students who choose to participate.

"This system has enabled Rutgers Law to maintain its diversity profile and its academic standing. Participation in MSP has been stable at about 30% each year, and the percentage of students of color in the law school as a whole is close to 40%. This was all achieved despite changes in federal equal protection law that made reaching results like these more difficult.

"Another exciting expansion of MSP occurred in 2015 when, as a result of the merger with the Rutgers-Camden Law School, we were able to launch MSP at our Camden location. We now have a growing number of MSP students in Camden who join the over 190 MSP students in Newark. Both locations provide a rich program that helps their students succeed in law school, develop important relationships with our more than 2,500 MSP alumni, and obtain meaningful summer and post-graduation legal work.

"As we celebrate its 50th anniversary, Rutgers Law School can point to a proud, vibrant and still very much needed MSP. Let’s all raise our glasses to that wonderful accomplishment. It has greatly enriched our law school, our state and our nation. As we celebrate the MSP’s remarkable history, let’s also look forward to its future contributions." - Professor Emeritus Paul Tractenberg

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Photo: Rutgers Law School (Rutgers Law School MSP students, class of 2020)