DIVERSITY AT PENN LAW

Brian Salazar '08

As a Latino and native Texan, I came to Penn by way of North Carolina. The greatest culture shock came when I originally left Houston for Chapel Hill - a community 1,200 miles from home with a comparatively homogeneous population (1% of UNC students were Latino). Within a year of leaving the comfort zone that was home, I stepped beyond the campus "bubble" to become active locally in the burgeoning Latino community. I am very proud to have worked with central North Carolina's newest Latino residents - particularly toward the goal of higher education for their children. In law school, I was looking forward to returning to a diverse, urban setting in which to spend three of the most important (or at least memorable) years of my life. Penn Law and Philadelphia have been tremendous in this regard.

I decided to become active in the Latin American Law Students Association in order to reach out to the Latino community in and around Philly. It has been through my active role with LALSA that I have come to appreciate the highly supportive interaction that Penn Law fosters among the student-run organizations. Thanks to the continued support of fellow student groups, LALSA proudly welcomed the ACLU's Executive Director as keynote speaker for our conference this year. Penn Law again joined together the following week - this time to celebrate the culmination of BLSA's outstanding efforts in securing the newly funded civil rights chair.

The Law School's appreciation for diversity has far exceeded my expectations and is truly something to behold. I hope you'll come see for yourself: irrespective of background, there's no better place for a law student to feel at home than Penn Law.