Centenary’s Pre-Law Society Holds Inaugural Meeting
This year Centenary welcomes a new organization on campus: the Pre-Law Society. PLS had their first meeting with their executive committee on Sept. 26 to get new members introduced and set out their goals and future planned events as a burgeoning organization on campus.
The president and founder of PLS is junior Sydney Welch. She wanted to start a pre-law organization at Centenary because as a freshman she did not know much about the steps that she would need to take during undergraduate in preparation for law school, and there is no specific pre-law department at Centenary. “I wanted to change that for others who came after me.” PLS secretary Basil Pugh said that a pre-law organization was “something mentioned to me when I came and toured as a thing that was trying to start,” and now Welch is the one who finally made the organization be able to come to fruition.
When Welch realized she wanted to take the steps to start the society, she went to Dr. Friesenhahn, an American politics professor who has since left Centenary, who helped her through the steps that it took to get chartered on campus. Welch, Friesenhahn, and Vice President Chana Williams also worked last year to draft a constitution and gain signatures to be approved by the Student Government Association. When it came to forming the executive board, “we all know each other really well,” said Pugh, “it was kind of a no-brainer who was going to do what.
Currently, Welch says that the goal of PLS is just to get the attention and interest of students on campus by doing events with the political science and history department and their social media. Public Relations Officer Kaylee Roberts came up with the idea of creating Instagram videos where they go around campus and ask students law and other politically related questions. At the moment, the two questions they have posted videos about are “What is your favorite constitutional amendment?” and, “What law would you create and why?” The goal of the videos is to incite more personal interaction with the student body and spread that way “rather than through a screen or word of mouth.”
Their goals for the future of the society are greater than just connecting with campus and making themselves known. They hope to be able to fully support students through the LSAT and law school applications and also to act as a pre-law department would at a larger school. They also want to help build connections and networks for students, as it can be difficult to go into the field of law without those things. Pugh emphasizes the importance of a “student-to-student network” and connection between the pre-law students at Centenary, and though they might not agree on everything, they can “all agree to help each other in this regard.”
“We’re finally building momentum and getting everything official; it was just a matter of timing,” says Pugh, as the political science department is growing and the Pre-Law society is finally lifting off the ground for its first year at Centenary. So far, the club has had two meetings and worked with the political science and history department for Constitution Day and the agreement signing between Centenary and the William H. Bowen School of Law.