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Pathways to the Profession: Darien Wynn L’19

August 03, 2017

As part his work in South Africa, Darien Wynn L'19 conducted research and fieldwork on issues impacting children with disabilities.
As part his work in South Africa, Darien Wynn L’19 conducted research and fieldwork on issues impacting children with disabilities.
In this dispatch, Darien Wynn L’19 describes his work with SECTION27, a public interest law center in South Africa.

Editor’s Note: Each summer Penn Law students hone their skills through a wide array of private and public sector internships across the country and around the world. Generous financial support and fellowships for international and public interest work enable students to pursue diverse assignments in the United States and abroad. This post from Darien Wynn L’19 is one in a series of firsthand accounts detailing how students’ summer employment opportunities are preparing them for their legal careers. 

Wynn attended Morehouse College, where he majored in English and minored in Psychology. Before law school, he taught seventh grade mathematics in his hometown of Laurel, MD through Teach for America and worked in the education policy sector as a research intern. At Penn Law, he serves on the Board for the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) and Penn Law Advocates for the Homeless (PLAH).

2017 has been a year of many firsts. As a first-generation professional student, I completed my first year of law school. Thanks to Penn Law’s International Summer Human Rights Fellowship (ISHRF), this year also marked my first time traveling outside the United States. After attending the ISHRF interest meeting and speaking with past fellows about their experiences, I knew I wanted to spend my 1L summer abroad.

I arrived at Penn Law with the intention of building upon my previous work in public education. Considering that my knowledge and experiences were limited to the American education system, I recognized how gaining an international perspective and learning firsthand how public education is accounted for in a different legal context could strengthen my advocacy and credibility in this space. Based on its history of racial oppression (including colonialism, apartheid and socio-economic inequalities), South Africa was the perfect place for me to compare both legal systems while simultaneously extracting valuable lessons and strategies.

As a legal intern at SECTION27, I have been able to do just that and more. SECTION27 is a public interest law center committed to expanding access to healthcare services and basic education through research, litigation, advocacy, and community mobilization. During my time here, I have worked primarily with the Education Team, providing research and fieldwork support on issues impacting children with disabilities.

Similar to the United States, children living with disabilities are not adequately accommodated in the South African public education system. This is often the second layer of discrimination for Black African learners with disabilities. In particular, visually impaired learners at former Black schools — even those in urban areas, do not have access to basic educational materials and resources such as textbooks. As a part of SECTION27’s litigation effort, I have interviewed and drafted affidavits on behalf of school officials, parents, and learners in order to demonstrate the impact of not having Braille textbooks in special schools.

My findings were both illuminating and sobering. At one school, I was able to visit a classroom and witness the impact firsthand. I observed a group of completely blind learners huddled around one partially sighted learner as he strained his eyes to read from a printed textbook. It saddened me see how the partially sighted learner had to jeopardize his eyesight for the sake of his and his peers’ education, as well as how the blind learners had absolutely no autonomy over their own learning. At another school, a parent described the situation perfectly, and her words have resonated with me ever since. She told me that due to the lack of Braille textbooks at school, her daughter spends every day trying to learn rather than actually living. Despite South Africa’s progressive Constitution — in that it explicitly provides for a right to basic education for all — and its education policies, the reality is stark and inhumane on the ground.

Aside from building upon my client interviewing skills, I have also been able to put my legal research skills into practice. My research projects have included reviewing legislation and policies on support staffing at special school hostel facilities and extracting lessons from U.S. budgetary systems in order to better finance rural schools throughout the country. This is illustrative of the fact that while South Africa is progressive on paper, these policies are not being implemented. Funding systems at state and school levels are therefore a significant part of the legal strategies.

Although my legal memorandums have not taken the traditional format prescribed during Legal Practice Skills (LPS), I have nonetheless still been able to apply skills, principles, and thought processes learned during the course to complete these projects. Unexpectedly, these projects have been a great precursor to my upcoming master’s coursework at the School of Social Policy and Practice. While conducting this research, I have been required to engage with and interpret quantitative data in a meaningful way, which has reminded me that in order to be an effective advocate in this space, my passion must be research-based and data-driven.

One of the most valuable aspects of my experience has been witnessing a process for affecting social change. I have fortunately been involved in aspects of this process — research, fieldwork, and legal strategizing — and I plan to take what I’ve learned back home to impact public education in the future.

- Darien Wynn

 

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