Graphic by Elizabeth Wong.
This past fall, a Women in Law club was introduced to the University of Rhode Island. After realizing she wanted more support for women interested in pre-law at the University, student Austyn Ramsay decided to create an organization to do just that.
“The whole point of this was to create support and a community for women who are interested in male-dominated fields such as law and politics,” said Ramsay. “We wanted to create something where women can come together, speak to each other about each other, our political interests, our views and goals.”
Ramsay is the current president and one of the founders, alongside Vice President Melanie Perez who is also a founder of the organization.
During meetings, members work on debating and other crucial skills that will help them as they enter law school. They also have been taking logic tasks, creating mock trial debates, learning about the stigma that comes with being a female lawyer and trying to acquire materials for people who are planning to eventually apply to law school.
“We always say ‘we don’t want this to be an org. where if you’re not pre-law you can’t join,’” Ramsay said. “It’s more just like women coming together who are interested in politics and law and other fields like that to come together and have a community on campus.”
Right now the organization has 12 members and first-year student Grace Kiernan is looking forward to hopefully gaining more members by the time she is an upperclassmen.
Current upperclassmen, Ramsay and Perez, also hope to come back to visit the club as alumni. They would be happy to see the club expand but would be even happier to see that the club is still up and running.
“We really wanted to create a safe space for [women] to come in to achieve their dreams and create a lasting foundation to get them to where they want to be,” Perez said.
Kiernan originally joined because she has known for awhile that she wants to be a lawyer and enjoys preparing herself early on for her future.
“So far this has been very fun and informative,” said Kiernan. “The logic tests and all of the different stuff we’ve done has been very useful already.”
When starting up they used open forum during Student Senate as a way to tell students about the opportunities women can receive from this club. A lot of the members found out about it by word-of-mouth from the founding members telling their friends and classmates.
Meetings are held at 5 p.m. on Thursdays. However, sometimes the group takes field trips to different law schools or visit other environments associated with the pre-law field. The Women in Law club is recognized by the political science department. To join or for more information, email [email protected].