For years to come, “bittersweet” memories of Moot
Court, friends and a sun-filled commencement day will accompany the
333 UCLA law students who graduated Sunday.
The commencement ceremony took place on the lawn adjacent to the
UCLA School of Law, with graduates walking down a blue carpet to
the cheers and applause of friends and family.
Speakers honored an array of student achievements, ranging from
the filing of a friend of the court brief in a Supreme Court case
involving affirmative action to a two-year run by class athletes as
intramural basketball champions.
Also honored were Peter Santos, a third-year law student who
died earlier this year, and Professor Emeritus Jesse Dukeminier,
who died in April.
In a speech emphasizing public service, commencement speaker Lee
Hamilton, director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars and a former Indiana congressman, asked students to think
of themselves as society’s future peacemakers.
“Without the constant effort to resolve conflict, this
country would collapse and fall apart at the seams,” he said.
“The well-being of this society ““ no one is better
prepared than you for this task.”
Diego Cartagena, a graduated law student, said he is leaving law
school with a new sense of responsibility.
“I think of the legal field as a specialized language
““ it’s like your own little realm,” he said.
“I’ve really developed a sense of responsibility … to
help those that haven’t had the same opportunities as the
rest of us.”
Despite a faltering economy and lowered employment rates for law
school graduates, Cartagena has secured a job that begins in
September. He will be working with teens in East Los Angeles,
educating them about family and immigration law.
Regarding law school, Cartagena said he will always remember his
professors, whom he described as “some of the top thinkers in
the area of race and law.”
More than anything else, Cartagena said he will look back fondly
on the friends he made.
“Some of these people are going to move back to New York
and it might be a long time before I see them again,” he
said.
Law student Anne Nguyen said she will remember her three years
at the School of Law with “a little bit of everything … a
mixed bag of emotions.”
She recalled her first year at the law school as one filled with
intense academic pressure. She described her second and third years
as “amazing.”
“I learned a lot about myself during law school,
especially because I was part of the critical race studies program
… learning about my community and everybody,” Nguyen
said.
Though Nguyen said she doesn’t have the “kind of
horror stories (about law school) that most people talk
about,” she does remember one night she spent at the law
library working on a Moot Court brief.
“I ended up staying at the library until three in the
morning … It’s three in the morning and there’s all
these law students sitting in the library, laughing,” she
said.
Nguyen will begin working in October doing litigation work at a
firm in San Francisco.
Another graduate Jason Goedekker said he was somewhat
demoralized by the intense competition of law school, but the
future and opportunity his education will provide him made the
experience worthwhile.
“There is a certain sense of accomplishment, having
survived, having completed and just having made it through,”
he said. “I don’t know what the future holds, but I
have a tangible sense of a lot more opportunities.”
Deborah Mellicker said she attended commencement to see her son,
Isaac Simon, graduate. She said Simon, who held up a sign that said
“Will sue for food” as he walked to his seat during the
ceremony, paid for his own education through scholarships and
student loans.
Mellicker added that Simon is planning to take the California
BAR examination and is exploring opportunities in intellectual
property law and international Internet law.