{"id":202,"date":"2007-09-27T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-27T08:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/09\/in-the-spirit-of-st-vincent.html"},"modified":"2007-09-27T08:30:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-27T08:30:00","slug":"in-the-spirit-of-st-vincent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/09\/in-the-spirit-of-st-vincent.html","title":{"rendered":"In the spirit of St. Vincent"},"content":{"rendered":"

….or not.
\nGeorgetown University Law School will now fund all student internships …no matter what the advocacy group involved.
\nFrom the university’s student newspaper:<\/a><\/p>\n

Administrators at the university\u2019s Law Center reversed earlier this month a policy prohibiting funding for students at summer internships at organizations that promote abortion rights, after a widely publicized case in the spring which drew protest from hundreds of students.
\nUnder the new policy, announced by Law Center Dean T. Alexander Aleinikoff in a letter published in the Law Center\u2019s student newspaper, the university will no longer consider the mission of each organization when determining grants provided by a student-run organization to students for summer internships.
\nThe student-run organization, the Equal Justice Foundation, provides money for some students who take unpaid summer internships, and receives funding from the Law Center. In March, the Law Center required that the group deny funding to Jenny Woodson (LAW \u201909), who had applied for an internship at Planned Parenthood, a group that supports abortion rights. The Catholic Church opposes abortion rights.
\nWoodson accepted the internship after members of the Law Center\u2019s administration and faculty helped her raise money through the Women and Law in Public Policy Fellowship.
\nIn a letter published in the Sept. 11 edition of Law Weekly \u2014 the weekly, student-run newspaper for the Law Center \u2014 and dated Sept. 7, Aleinikoff announced that the policy had been changed.
\n\u201cIn partnership with the Equal Justice Foundation, the Law Center will provide grants to all students who work on law-related issues at a public interest organization or government agency. \u2026 The program contributes in important ways to the Law Center\u2019s academic program, both by expanding meaningful opportunities for students to engage in reflective experiential learning and by inculcating a commitment to public service,\u201d he said in the letter.
\nAleinikoff could not be reached for comment for this report.
\nDeborah Epstein, associate dean of clinical education and public interest and community service programs at the Law Center, attributed the decision, at least in part, to the outcry that resulted from the Woodson decision.
\n\u201cWhen this issue arose on campus last semester, we began to look at the EJF program in a broader context,\u201d she said.
\nAfter the incident became well-known, students from Georgetown\u2019s Law Students for Choice circulated a petition that demanded that the Law Center alter their policy, issue an apology to Woodson and hold an open forum to discuss the issue. According to Joy Welan (LAW \u201908), president of Georgetown\u2019s Law Students for Choice, 360 students signed this petition.
\nWelan said her group and Aleinikoff met several times over the summer to discuss the policy.
\n\u201cWe think that this compromise is fantastic news, for students who are interested in pursuing careers in reproductive rights advocacy, and for all students, who will now be able to pursue public interest internships without worrying about finding funding,\u201d Welan said. \u201cThe dean has taken a huge step forward in advancing Georgetown’s commitment to public interest law, and we applaud him for it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From the blog of the organization Law Students for Reproductive Justice:<\/a><\/p>\n

The proof is in the pudding: on-campus advocacy can get things done. And fast.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Extend your mercy towards others, so that there can be no one in need whom you meet without helping. For what hope is there for us if God should withdraw His Mercy from us<\/em>?\u00a0 (St. Vincent de Paul, feastday 9\/27)
\n(BTW – Compare and contrast with Villanova’s treatment of the same issue.<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

….or not. Georgetown University Law School will now fund all student internships …no matter what the advocacy group involved. From the university’s student newspaper: Administrators at the university\u2019s Law Center reversed earlier this month a policy prohibiting funding for students at summer internships at organizations that promote abortion rights, after a widely publicized case in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-morality","category-ticked-off"],"yoast_head":"\nIn the spirit of St. Vincent - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/09\/in-the-spirit-of-st-vincent.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In the spirit of St. Vincent - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"….or not. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}