 Good afternoon everyone, my name is Michael Donnelly Boylan and I am the Assistant Dean of Admissions here at the Law School. I would like to welcome all of you to Roger Williams University School of Law and to Orientation 2016. I am so glad to see the class of 2019 has finally arrived, you have no idea. We have been anxiously waiting for you. We in the Admissions Office have had the distinct pleasure of getting to know you throughout this process. Thank you for sharing your stories with us. The class of 2019 has had a wide range of experiences and I am here today to tell you a little bit about the folks you'll be calling your classmates for the next three years. Before I hand your class over to President Farrish, Dean Yelnosky, and the faculty. Students in your class attended a wide variety of colleges and universities including Arizona State, Cornell, UConn, the University of Texas and Antonio, Colorado State, and Florida International University. But some schools sent us a few more than others. Two schools are tied for fifth place on the list of largest feeder schools for your class. Those are Rutgers University in New Jersey and Stone Hill College in Massachusetts, which both sent us three students. St. Anselm's College in New Hampshire is in fourth place with five students. Rhode Island College in third with seven students. Our own Roger Williams University is second with eleven students. And this year the top feeder school to your class is the University of Rhode Island, which sent us 21 students, a total of 13% of your class. In your class you will find a high school teacher, a lobbyist, a freelance journalist, a union organizer, a concert promoter, an anti-bullying advocate. You will even find an actor who toured in the Broadway production of Shrek. Members of your class have worked to create change in their communities. One member of your class founded a non-profit in New Jersey to aid young girls who are the victims of sexual abuse. Another drafted and promoted a law passed in Rhode Island to help student athletes who receive concussions. And one here served as an advocate for homeless youth in the state of Montana. Someone in your class founded a fair trade organization to make their university free of sweatshop labor. Someone else taught ESL to refugees in Manchester, New Hampshire. And another worked in a sexual health clinic catering to the underserved in Syracuse, New York. Classmates have built homes for migrant workers in California, helped domestic violence victims in West Africa, worked with undocumented students in New Jersey in need of mental health care, and educated LGBT youth in Seattle about the perils of human trafficking. An unusually large number of students in your class have spent significant time working with and advocating for the disabled both locally and nationally. You have made the most of your college experiences. We have a quarterback of the football team from Gettysburg College, the student body vice president from our own Roger Williams University, and the president of a diversity organization at Stonehill College. You have had many interesting internships including with the DEA, the TV news in El Paso, Texas, the Rhode Island Commission on Human Rights, and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Many of you have had legal internships. You have trained in law offices in Columbus, Mississippi, District Court in King, New Hampshire, the Bridgeport Connecticut Public Defender's Office, and the Rhode Island Supreme Court, just to name a few. Frankly, I lost track of how many of you interned at the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office. Apparently our alums there are our best advocates. At the law school that houses the highly regarded Marina Fairs Institute it should not be shocking that a number of your classmates have done interesting things on and around the water. Your classmates have been on their school sailing teams, have worked on lobster boats, and even detailed yachts. They have also searched for the remains of a Dutch fleet shipwrecked in 1677 off the coast of Tobago, and have worked on educational research vessels conducting hands-on research on the marine ecosystem. I predict this will be a very interesting election year in this building as your class has been extremely politically active. One of you attended the Democratic National Convention in 2012, while another attended the CPAC Convention in 2013 and 2015. In your class you will find the Campaign Manager of Frank Caprio's Campaign for Governor of Rhode Island and a Staff Assistant from Senator Marco Rubio's Orlando office. You have interned for Governor Christie in New Jersey, Governor Baker in Massachusetts, Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire, Senator Reid of Rhode Island, and Senator Warner of Virginia. One of your classmates even spent two weeks last year visiting the Iowa caucuses and meeting with 14 different presidential candidates advocating for employment opportunities for people with disabilities. This may be the largest number of public safety officers we have seen in one class in quite some time. We have a number of current and former police officers. We also have a 9-1-1 dispatcher, a volunteer firefighter, an EMT, and a TSA agent. 6% of your class served in the United States military, representing the Army, Navy, and Marines. A number of you served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Someone here serves in the National Guard. One classmate was in the Coast Guard, and another was in the Coast Guard Reserves. We thank all of you for your service. 32% of your class is made up of Rhode Islanders, meaning two-thirds of you are relocating to the Ocean State. 26% of your class hails from the other New England states, and exactly the same percentage, 26, come from the rest of the Northeast. In fact, yours is the only class that I can think of in my memory where the second biggest state behind Rhode Island is New York. 9% of your class comes from the South, 5% from the West, and 2% from the Midwest. A large number of your classmates immigrated to the United States. Just some of the countries you were born in, Canada, Guatemala, India, Benin, Morocco, Paraguay, and the United Arab Emirates. Your class is evenly split between men and women. The average age of your class is 25. 9% of you are 30 years of age or older. A number of you are married, and some of you have children. And 4% of your class identifies as members of the LGBT community. As of tonight, we expect that 26% of your class comes from racial and ethnic groups underrepresented in the legal profession, making your class the second most diverse in this law school's history. With the addition of your class to the classes already here, Rachel Williams University School of Law is the most diverse it has ever been. I am also very pleased to say that while many law schools have continued to shrink, your class marks our law school's third year of steady enrollment growth. And I'm even more pleased to announce that that growth is not at the expense of quality. In fact, your class has the highest LSAT scores of any class currently in our building. Finally, I'm very pleased to welcome our inaugural class of the Masters of Studies in Law program. These students, mainly working professionals, will be taking classes alongside our JD students while they earn their MSL degree. I think you will value the perspective these new students will add to the classroom. In this group, you will find a reporter from the Providence Journal who covers the courts, a mediator, a longtime legal assistant at a law office, the assistant director of the Rhode Island Office of Veterans Affairs, and someone who assists the legal team at HealthSource Rhode Island. It has been a pleasure getting to know all of you over the last year. Please don't be strangers to the admissions office. Stop by and say hello. And on behalf of all of us at RWU Law, welcome to law school.