Second-year Law student Charis Redmond was recently elected vice chair of the National Black Law Students Association at the NBLSA’s national convention.
The NBLSA is an organization that supports the academic and professional needs of black law students and seeks to increase the number of black and minority professionals in the legal field, according to its website.
Redmond will serve a one-year term, which starts April 1.
Redmond, who also serves as the president of the University’s chapter of the Black Law Students Association, said organizations like the NBLSA are important for black and other minority students because the number of minority students who apply to law school is decreasing.
Minority students who enter the legal field sometimes feel like other students fail to understand them, Redmond said.
“Sometimes they feel like a white-dominated legal field doesn’t really understand what ... [they] go through,” Redmond said. “NBLSA is really a place where these students can get to know people from similar backgrounds, network with their peers [and] have access to firms and employers … who really care about increasing diversity.”
While serving as vice chair of NBLSA, Redmond said one of her main jobs will be to implement the executive board’s objectives. She said she is especially excited to work on furthering the NBLSA’s national recognition and involvement.
“NBLSA is known in the legal sense, but it’s not really as familiar to people as an organization that does advocacy work,” Redmond said. “That’s something that we’re working on this year, and advancing our organization to the point of recognition of being a strong African community.”
Monica Martin, a second-year Law student and secretary of the University’s Black Law Student Association, said she thinks Redmond is a great fit for the position due to her confidence and leadership abilities.
“She tends to see opportunities,” Martin said. “When she became president of BLSA ... she thought ‘Hey, what are some things we can be doing better? How can we be better for the students, our members and our community?’”
Redmond said part of the reason she got so involved with the NBLSA was the feeling of pride that came from the community she grew up in.
“As a kid, I was just indoctrinated with the idea of being proud of my race, being proud of my heritage,” Redmond said. “In my community, everyone from the janitor to the politicians ... was black, so there’s this idea that you can go and achieve and be whatever you want to be.”
Redmond said she was inspired by the idea that she could pave the way for other black students to succeed and achieve as much as she has.
“There’s this idea that no matter what you do, no matter where you go and what you succeed, you have to give back so that someone that’s coming after you can be able to have those same opportunities,” Redmond said. “Coming to law school, that was my mindset.”
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