 Thank you Professor Barron. So good evening everyone. This is exactly what we want. This is a good time. Welcome to Roger Williams University School of Law's 2023 Champions for Justice. My name is Greg Bowman and as Dean of our fine law school I'm really pleased to welcome you here this evening. It's great to see everyone. A quick logistical note, the salads have already been served so please feel free to start with your salads now. The main course will be served in about 10 or 15 minutes. So this event, Champions for Justice, is the premier annual gala in Rhode Island for our legal community. Tonight is an opportunity for us to come together for students to network and get to know leaders in the Rhode Island legal community. For all of us at the law school to thank our donors for their support for our programs and our students. And it's an opportunity for us to honor this year's Champions for Justice. And tonight is in many ways a joyous event, but we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge this evening the discord, the injustice, and the pain that occurs across our country on a daily basis. You've watched the news this week. It has been filled with the tragic killing of Tyree Nichols in Memphis. Mr. Nichols is yet another black man in our country killed at the hands of police and it is tragic. It should never happen, but it does. And while we hear some folks say well that's not who we are as a country, I will disagree. I'm afraid that's not true. I think this is who we are as a country until we change it. So as we express our gratitude tonight to our many supporters and our friends, and as we celebrate our new Champions for Justice this year, let us do so with the knowledge that our work is far from done. So as we begin our program tonight, I want to take a moment right now to reflect on the lands on which we reside. We are coming from many places and we want to acknowledge the ancestral homelands and the traditional territories of Indigenous and Native peoples who have been here since time immemorial and to recognize that we must continue to build our solidarity and our kinship with Native peoples across the Americas and across the globe. Roger Williams University is located in Bristol, Rhode Island and in Providence, Rhode Island. And so we acknowledge and we honor the Narragansett and the Poconucket peoples as well as Soems, the land on which our campus resides, the original name of the land on which our campus resides. And we also want to acknowledge that this country would not exist if not for the free enslaved labor of Black people. And we recognize the town of Bristol and the very land on which our campus resides have benefited significantly from the trade of enslaved people from Africa. The economy of New England, of Rhode Island and more specifically of Bristol was built from wealth generated through the triangle trade of human lives. So during this time of ongoing national reckoning with our history of slavery and the disparate treatment of Black people, we honor the legacy of the Black, the African diaspora and the Black lives and knowledge and skills stolen due to violence and white supremacy. And while the movement for justice and liberation is building and we are witnessing the power of the people, many are still being met with violence and even being killed. So as upholders of justice, our hope is to become agents of change for members of our society who have been met with violence, physical, mental, emotional, through our privilege. And as upholders of justice, we believe that our students who soon will be practitioners of law can be and already are agents of change as well. I hope that this land and labor acknowledgement underscores the importance of what we are doing here tonight. We are honoring the impactful work of this year's champions for justice as well as the work of all other champions for justice before them. Their work matters. Their work changes the world. And the work of the law school does too. 30 years ago in 1993, the founding of our law school was controversial. Many people said that Rhode Island did not need a law school. Actually, many people said that Rhode Island already had a law school. It was located in Boston. It's named Suffolk. Some of you may have heard of it. But 30 years later in 2023, the wisdom of starting our own law school is clear. We have excellent clinics and externship programs. We have excellent faculty and staff. We have an inclusive and diverse student body. We have thousands of successful and accomplished alumni and many more thousands of supporters. We have become national leaders in teaching and scholarship about issues of race and the law, about issues of doctrine and diversity. And because of this work, Bloomberg Law has just ranked our law school as a top scoring program in innovation and justice. We are a success story that is worthy of celebration. And in the spirit of celebration, I want to make two important 30th anniversary announcements tonight that go to the core of our law school's identity and mission. So first, I am pleased to announce that because of our law school's commitment to diversity, inclusion, and social justice, and because of our national reputation in that area, U.S. civil rights lawyer Fred Gregg has accepted our invitation to receive an honorary degree from our law school. Mr. Gregg, who is 92 years old and still practices law, is an icon in U.S. civil rights and legal history. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once described Mr. Gregg as, and I quote, the chief counsel of the protest movement. He is a native of Alabama and he represented Dr. King in various matters and also represented Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin in the Montgomery bus point. In 2022, Mr. Gregg received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Biden and we so look forward to hosting Mr. Gregg and his wife in Bristol at our commencement ceremony in May and to honoring his service to the country and to the legal profession. So that's the first announcement. The second announcement is this. In celebration of our law school's 30th anniversary and to further deepen our commitment to social justice and to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, Roger Williams University School of Law will establish a new center for race and the law in 2020. This new center for race and the law will embody the social justice work that our law school has become nationally recognized for and establishing the center and raising the funding for it will help us broaden and deepen our law school's service and impact. This new center for race and the law will make the law school's next 30 years even more impactful than its first three decades. Our new center for race and the law will be built on three foundational pillars. The first is faculty teaching and research. We already have developed the nation's leading course on race and the foundations of American law is a required course for all of our second year students. We already have faculty, your experts in this area of teaching and jurisprudence. Thank you. We already have faculty, your experts in this area of teaching and jurisprudence, including Professor Bernard Freeman, a nationally known scholar who joined our faculty this year and who was with us here this evening. Over the next several years we need to do even more faculty hiring and we need to expand our research even further so that we can continue to cement our law school's national reputation as a leading innovator and contributor in this area of teaching and research. So that's the first teaching and research. The second pillar consists of student scholarships and programs. Since 2020, with the support of generous donors, we have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for student scholarships that both make the law school more affordable and increase the diversity and the inclusiveness of our law school's student body. Students who have received these scholarships are here with us tonight. We are also expanding our DEI student programming, including our endowed lecture series, as well as programming that reinforces our law school's inclusive culture. And with additional funding, we can continue to increase both our student scholarships and this program. The third pillar in this initiative is about facilities. We want to design and establish a new physical home for the Center for Race and the Law. Having a physical location for the center at the law school will both support the center's important work and serve as a physical embodiment of our law school's dedication to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice for all. With the new Center for Race and the Law that is founded on these three pillars of impact, teaching and research, student scholarships and programs, and facilities, our law school's reputation as a local and national leader in DEI work will be firmly established. We will have a truly national and a local impact. So starting today, and let's dream big, it is our goal as we celebrate our 30th anniversary to raise millions of dollars in support of the center and its three pillars. To make this center successful, we need your support. So watch for opportunities to support this new center. We will be asking for your help. We will be in touch. And frankly, I just, I can't think of a better way to celebrate our law school's 30th birthday. This kind of work to make a difference in the world is why I became a lawyer 30 years ago. It's why I became a law professor 20 years ago. And I firmly and deeply believe that law schools, when we are doing things right, can be, should be, and in our case, will be, agents of social change. We should be working together to make the world a better and more just place for all. And our new Center for Race and the Law will do just that. So speaking of support, we have many generous sponsors for this evening's event, and they are listed on our program and on our website and on the slides. I want to thank all of them. And in particular, our lead sponsors for this evening's event, Chisholm Chisholm and Kilpatrick Limited, Mandel Boy Claire and Mandel Limited, Mirasco and Nestlebush, LLP, Motley Rice, LLC, and Robinson and Cole. And we are also this evening joined by some of our wonderful law students. And for the students in the room, my message to you is this. Tonight is for you. This event is for you. You are the future of legal education. You are the future of the legal profession. We are very, very proud of you. In addition, we are joined this evening by other distinguished guests. These are folks who support our law school in so many ways. And we appreciate all of you who are here tonight, very, very deeply. I want to extend a warm welcome this evening to members of the Federal and State Judiciary, elected officials, university trustees, members of the law school's board of directors, and the law alumni association board of directors, members of the university's board of trustees, honorary degree recipients, and our returning champions whom we have honored in previous years. Thank you all for being here with us this evening. In addition, I also want to thank the president of Roger Williams University, Yannis Mialis, for being here with us this evening. Dr. Mialis is a wonderfully strong partner and supporter for our law school and for our students. Thank you for being here with us this evening. Yannis, would you care to come up and say a few words, please? Good evening and thank you, Greg. I started my job in 2019, and my first event like that is 2020. It was a huge event. I met a number of you that were here during this year, and you remember that event was almost twice the size. It was before COVID, of course. And of course, COVID hit, and the year after that, there was nothing. And then we're building it up, and the excitement is building up. And another of you told me that this is the signature event for the legal community of Rhode Island and how excited you are to every year attend this, and we're going to be building it even stronger and stronger. And I'm pleased to be with you, the Rhode Island legal community, for this special evening tonight. And I want to thank, to thank to our distinguished Norris for all that you do and for joining us tonight. You personify the law school's mission in so many ways. And also to our law students in attendance, and you folks look around. We have so many important members of the bar here, network, and I know your network. You cannot stop talking even during the dean's remarks. And this is your chance to network. And tonight is a very special event, not just for the school of law, but also for Roger Williams University as a whole. The law school is very important to the current and future success of our university. Today, the law school is more involved with the university than ever before. And Dean Baumann and I both share a commitment to public service, to being mission focused, and to transformational collaboration across academic disciplines. Both the law school and Roger Williams University as a whole are stronger because we work together. There are many collaborations taking place right now between the university and the law school. Specific areas of collaboration include prioritizing work in the blue economy, as well as real estate and affordable housing. I'm also proud to say that issues of social justice, diversity, and racial equity are a priority for both the law school and the entire university. I'm excited to be working with Craig on those important issues, and I'm excited about the new center for race and the law that Craig announced earlier. I hope you will be supportive of these important efforts, and I certainly am as well. By working together across academic disciplines, the university of the law school are creating transformational chains for the benefit for everyone in Rhode Island and the region. Thank you for your involvement in Roger Williams University law, and for being here tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much, and everyone, thank you very much for listening to the president, if not always to me. I appreciate that. So as in years past, we have a silent auction taking place this evening. You can bid on items on the silent auction app, which is called HandBid. On your table, you will find the programs, and on the program, there is a QR code with a link to the app and the site for the silent auction. The silent auction raises money to fund our pro bono and experiential programs. It will remain open until 8.30 this evening, and you could be the lucky winner of many different things, including my favorite, a one month pass to park in the Dean's parking spot in Bristol. Janice's favorite, a dinner for up to eight people with President Mialis at the president's residence on campus. If you have not dined at Janice's, let me just say he is a fantastic chef, a fantastic host. You are guaranteed to be superbly fed, superbly entertained, and have a wonderful time. Tickets to a Red Sox game, and more. All sorts of things. Check it out, please. Many of our silent auction items this evening have been donated by the law school's faculty, alumni, and staff. We also have many bar exam prep courses that have been donated by our corporate partners, Themis and Capital. These courses were donated for free by these companies, though worth at least $1,000 each. So for the students who are 3Ls in the room, these are great buys. So as you can see, dinner is being served. We hope you enjoy it. The program will continue in about half an hour after we're finished with dinner. Thank you and enjoy your meal. Okay, everyone, if we're going to have your attention, please, we're going to continue. Thank you. There we go. All right, before we go any further, I want us to give a big thanks to the staff who have been serving and helping us this evening. This is a really complicated operation to get everything served out on time, to get the food ready, to get the food served, to get everything taken up, and to get the delicious dessert out. So this is really amazing. So to everyone working tonight, thank you. We really, really appreciate what you're doing to make sure that this is a really fun, successful, celebratory evening. So for everyone else, I hope you've enjoyed the meal, and I hope you are using hand-bid to bid on the auction items. Please. It's a lot of fun. You want to park in my parking space. You want to do a lot of other fun things, too. So this is the premier event for the legal profession in Rhode Island, and what started out as a small auction on the second floor of the law school has grown into a grand gala. The money raised this evening will support experiential programs at the law school, including the pro bono collaborative, the alternative spring break program, our legal clinics and externships, and our public interest summer stipend program. And you'll notice the students were the first ones to clap. Your support gives our students the opportunity to participate in these programs, and that gives them the opportunity to learn firsthand what it really means to be a lawyer, to be a member of our service profession, to be the only thing standing between a client and disaster, and that's incredibly important. Now, our pro bono and externship and clinical programs rely on your support, but they also rely on the excellent work of my colleagues at the law school who serve our clinics, our externships, and our pro bono programs, and I'm grateful for their dedication. I'm proud to be their colleague. And in addition to those colleagues, we have many other hardworking, dedicated, excellent faculty and staff at the law school who make a difference in the lives of our students every day, both inside and outside of the classroom. So at this time, would all law school faculty and staff please stand and be recognized? I've been a lawyer for 30 years. I've been a law professor for 20 years. I can tell you that this is the best place I've ever worked. These are the best people and the best professionals with whom I have ever worked, and I'm so proud to be here. So speaking of excellent folks who make a difference, this is the moment we've been waiting for. This is when we present our champions for justice this year, and to start us off, I am pleased to welcome to the podium my faculty colleague, Laurie Barron, who serves as the law school's director of clinical externships and director of the Feinstein Center for Pro Bono and experiential education, and she will present our 2023 alumni public interest champion. Professor Barron. I brought Joy up here with me. It is my tremendous privilege to present Joy Dingle with the alumni champion for justice award. To all the students in the room, this could be you in 10, 15, 20 years. Okay? Come a little closer, Joy. So Joy has dedicated her career to working for student access and equity and ensuring that students from diverse backgrounds have access to higher education and legal careers. She came to our law school after several years teaching middle and high school students and providing academic support to college students in New Jersey. When she matriculated in the fall of 2000, she was determined to combine her teaching background and commitment to equal education opportunity with a legal career. I remember worrying just a little bit about what her path was going to be, but I never should have. Joy wasn't concerned. She was always smiling, positive, and energized. She knew she would get there, and she made it happen. So law students, listen to this. While in law school, she took advantage of every possible opportunity. She interned for the honorable Edward Clifton at our table tonight. We should all do that. She ex-turned at the U.S. Attorney's Office. She did the Family and Disability Law Clinic, which some of you've never even heard of or knew we had. And she wrote a directed research paper on race-sensitive university admissions policies, which are unfortunately in jeopardy right now in the Supreme Court. She was the president of the Multicultural Law Students Association, the president of the Moot Court Board, and a member of the Association for Public Interest Law, Go April. And she built a strong public interest community of friends along the way, some of whom are here tonight and are still, like me, completely in awe of Joy. After law school, Joy continued to find opportunities to focus on access to education, working at the U.S. Department of Education, teaching at a public charter school, directing a college prep program at Georgetown University's Institute for College Preparation and Consulting. And then in 2016, Joy became the senior director of legal diversity initiatives at Street Law Incorporated in Maryland. In that position, she oversees 85 legal diversity pipeline programs across the U.S. She trains countless lawyers and law students. She creates partnerships with law firms and companies to provide a pipeline to encourage high school students to consider legal careers and on and on and on. She's doing exactly what she set out to do. It was always going to happen. And Joy is generously giving back to the law school. She's currently serving on a DEI Strategic Planning Committee, and she's also facilitating an innovative partnership for our street law students to teach and lead a one-day mock trial activity at six different Spring Point schools in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Thank you, Joy, for all that you have done for the next generation of law students and lawyers. We are so grateful. Good evening, everyone. Laurie, thank you very much for that generous introduction. You really put the proud into public interest, and I want to thank you personally. You have touched my life, that of my classmates and some of the students who have followed, and so I'm thankful to you. President Melonus, Dean Bowman, colleagues and friends, and students, I am pleased to join you tonight. During my 28-year professional journey as an educator and attorney, I have had the privilege to advocate for, advise, and teach hundreds of students. I often tell them that they should enter the room as if they are interviewing for a job. And I'm embarrassed to say that I have not necessarily followed my own advice. I did not realize that anyone was watching what I was doing. And so, like so many lawyers who serve the public interest, I come to work each day with the goal of doing my best, empowering people when I can, and usually with modest resources and even less attention. So, when I received word that I would be recognized for my work, I was both surprised and humbled. I have immeasurable respect in my admiration for the work of the other honorees, Megan Smith and her team at the House of Hope and the legendary Bob Mann, and I want to accept my warmest congratulations to all of you. I accept this honor in loving memory of my parents, both of whom were caring souls, devoted civil servants, and people of faith. They demonstrated kindness and respect toward all, always lent a hand to those in need, and stood up against injustice. They were a shining example to me and my siblings, along with the other young people in our community. It is on their shoulders and those of our ancestors on which I stand. I am the youngest of four, and I have to give thanks to my sister and two brothers as well. Although they are proud of me, they don't actually care that I'm a lawyer. For them, my most important titles are sister, auntie, and buddy, and I wouldn't have it any other way. They, along with my six remarkable nieces, keep me grounded, and I love each and every one of them. Some of my dear classmates are here with me tonight, and Diana, Camille, 20 years later, I am fortunate to call you my colleagues and friends, and I'm so grateful that we can share this moment. I am also grateful to my many law school mentors who offered encouragement and guidance in those early years. And Lori, I can't say I had it together every day. I had faith, but, you know, there were some days, but in those early, tentative days, those mentors inspired me, and they continue to, even now, and many are in the room tonight and right at my own table, and I'm just absolutely thrilled. And last and certainly not least are the young people I have an opportunity to serve through my work at street law. Their intelligence, tenacity, and unquenchable thirst for justice give me hope. Diversifying the legal profession is not about shifting the burden to students and attorneys and judges of color. It is not about standing back and just letting DEI professionals do their work. It is about all of us coming together to create meaningful opportunities, schools, and workplaces that allow people of color to excel and assume leadership positions while remaining their authentic selves. It is about all of us raising our expectations, challenging our assumptions, and removing the barriers that keep too many gifted people of color from staying the course and contributing in meaningful ways. I need everybody to lean in on this because this one is going to be on the test. There is no shortage of diverse talent. There is a shortage of imagination and a willingness to embrace change. We have the resources to make our noble profession match the demographics of our beautiful United States of America. What we need is the courage to let go of the practices and traditions that keep us from finding lasting equity and belonging. As we often say in the world of civic education, democracy is a verb. And guess what, everybody? So is diversity. Thank you very much for this honor. So that was our first honorary. Thank you so much, Joy, for all of you that all of you have done. Thank you, Laurie. And Joy, your work is truly making a difference in the world, and we are honored to be part of your journey and of your story. So now I'm pleased to have with me here on the near the podium my faculty colleague, Professor Eliza Warnberg, who will present our award for the 2023 Community Partner Champion for Justice. Thank you, Greg. Can everybody hear me? Okay. I'm presenting Laura Jaworski. Sorry. Megan Smith and the House of Hope CDC Outreach Program with the Community Champion Award. Since the moment I met Megan, I knew that she and her colleagues at House of Hope were an exceptional group of people whose care and concern for those they serve is deep and authentic. For years, the House of Hope has served our most disenfranchised communities with the utmost respect, fighting tirelessly for safe housing as a basic human right. Their goal, quote, to see all Rhode Islanders thrive from the comfort of home, a home. The pro bono collaborative and the criminal defense clinic have partnered with House of Hope on a variety of initiatives, including the Housing Appeals Project that involved assisting unhoused people with their public housing application denials. Their license restoration work and the creation of a fund to help people afford the costs associated with getting their licenses restored and a campaign to reduce and in some cases eliminate burdensome court fines and fees. These are just a few of our collaborations with House of Hope. A final word about Megan Smith, who in addition to everything else she manages to do serves on the pro bono collaborative advisory board. Megan is tireless. She is a true friend and advocate to those dealing with the most challenging circumstances. She is creative, collaborative, and innovative, and she has a wicked sense of humor. She is a true community champion. Congratulations, Megan, Laura, and the House of Hope. It's truly an honor to be here today to accept this award on behalf of the House of Hope. Thank you for that incredibly generous introduction. Thank you to everyone here. It's humbling to be in the company of all of you and in the company of the other award recipients. So I am a social worker by trade and training. I'm an outreach worker with the House of Hope, so I work with folks mainly who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness. At House of Hope, we affirm that safe, stable housing is a basic human right, and we address the trauma of homelessness by empowering constituents, delivering high impact innovative services, diversifying housing options, and advocating for policies to counter structural inequalities. In order to accomplish this mission, one-on-one relationships are integral to what allows us to forge connections and see the individual strengths and structural barriers that our clients face. As likely resonates with many if not all of you in this room, this is especially salient because we work with folks who are best ignored and actively and often actively antagonized and criminalized. Working in and with these communities, a lot of our effort goes not to trying to change or reform people, as I think many people who don't do this work might think, but on changing and reforming the systems that oppress them. Look for among allies. Thank you. Know your audience. Tented care, by which I mean truly seeing a person in their full context and taking my lead, our lead, from their world view and goals is too often reduced to a buzzword, but that is not the case at House of Hope, and that is not the case with the Roger Williams University School of Law. Interactions with RWU have been a gift because the community here understands that the people with whom we work have complex lives shaped by multiple forms of systemic oppression, and that working with this client population requires structural competence in seeing these interconnections. There are too many examples of this for me to name, but just to give two. A couple of years ago, immediately pre-COVID, I brought a client to the immigration program. He is a person who is experiencing street homelessness, who is at risk of deportation for so-called crimes of moral torpitude, which involves simple possession of marijuana, and seeing the way that that attorney interacted with him and guided him and interacted with his wonderful sweet mother throughout this whole process and ultimately avoided deportation, allowed him to gain status, which subsequently allowed him to gain housing, highlights what I mean when I say structural competence and seeing a person in their full nature. Also, Andy, since you're right in front of me, I can call you out, in more cases than I can count, you have been a tremendous advocate to the innumerable people I've directed your way to help navigate issues related to municipal court charges and issues at the traffic tribunal, and in each and every case, you've taken them as their full beautiful selves, even when those full beautiful selves sometimes pose challenges to communication. This advocacy doesn't stay just on the level of case, but very much extends to the level of cause advocacy as well. Eliza already gave several of these examples, but to give a couple more, it's included the ongoing campaign for municipal court reform, campaigns to legalize the act of panhandling, and the driver's license restoration pilot. And what these campaigns have in common is that they are directly emergent from clients' lived experiences and responsive to their immediate and central needs. And they also use the positionality of attorneys, social workers, and other advocates as collaborators to maximum effect, whether that's playing inside or outside of our legal system. What makes these campaigns impactful is the genuine care and understanding of clients that they demonstrate, as well as a deep commitment to both individual and systems change advocacy and seeing the interconnections between those. What makes these campaigns sustainable is having partners who both validate and challenge us, is grateful to count Roger Lehm's University School of Law as such an ally, and more fundamentally, as a partner and hearing and centering the experiences of those served and taking bold, innovative, and transformative action towards social justice. Thank you. Thank you, Eliza. Thank you, Laura. Thank you, Megan. The work of House of Hope is truly deeply impactful. Your colleagues and you make an enormous difference, and we're proud to honor you this evening. So now it's time to present our last honoree, our 2023 Champion for Justice, and I am pleased to turn the microphone over to my law school faculty colleague, Associate Dean Andy Horowitz. It's my honor and my privilege to present the 2023 Champion for Justice Award to my friend and colleague, Bob Mann. I truly cannot think of anyone more deserving of this award. Bob is without question the most well-known and universally respected criminal defense attorney in the state of Rhode Island. He's a hero and an inspiration to many of us who toil in the fields, always taking on the most challenging cases, representing the poor, the despised, the outcasts, the dispossessed. Bob came from humble beginnings, growing up as a self-described military brat, mostly in Germany. He graduated high school early and began his education at Yale at the age of 16. Upon graduation from Yale, Bob obtained a commission in the Army and served two years that included a tour in Vietnam. He then went on to Yale Law School, where he was a classmate of Bill and Hillary. Upon graduation, he became a Vista lawyer for Rhode Island Legal Services, after which he opened his own law firm to do civil rights and criminal defense work. In 1985, he argued Moran versus Burbine, one of the leading U.S. Supreme Court cases interpreting the Miranda decision. And in that case, he successfully commenced three justices of the wisdom of his argument. Bob's lifetime of work has been recognized with a great many honors from the Rhode Island Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, from the Rhode Island Bar Association, from Justice Assistance, and most recently from the Federal Bar Association. But beyond his obvious intellect and skill as an attorney, several other attributes stand out. He is an extraordinarily kind man with a tremendous sense of ethics. He is generous to a fault with his time, his willingness to work for little to no money, and his mentorship of law students and of the next generation of young attorneys. Countless extraordinary attorneys, including his stepdaughter, who's at the table with us, have been inspired by Bob to follow in his path. Please join me in congratulating Bob Mann on this well-deserved award. First of all, thank you very, very much. This is an incredible honor. I'm very grateful to you all. I am particularly want to express my gratitude to a few groups of people to the law school, and more about that, and the force that has become for all of us in the legal community. To my colleagues who remind me every day of the issues that we face as lawyers, so and to my family, lest I forget my daughter who's a public defender. So the first group of thing I want to do is say thank you. The next thing I want to do is talk about how the law school has really become an institution in the not just the legal community, but in the whole community of Rhode Island. It would be sort of like having a chair with three legs and taking one out if you lost the law school right now. The law school is a forum that allows for exchange of ideas, it allows people to debate and dispute things with each other, it allows people to argue, and that's an incredible luxury. I don't think we in this country appreciated what a luxury it was until a few years ago. Now we see how much in jeopardy our democracy could be. What the law school does I think is it fosters the ability to communicate among people from different perspectives, and that is ultimately what will preserve this democracy. We're not always going to agree on everything that's a given, but we have to have a forum or a manner in which we can disagree with each other without becoming totally disagreeable. We have to learn how not only to speak but also how to listen. But in all of that the law school becomes a critical factor because there will be a couple of hundred people who leave this place tonight who will practice law in Rhode Island for the next several decades, and hopefully they will remember that the people they're arguing with were their classmates, and there might be a grain of decency amongst the fact that the issues that they disagree with. And there's got to be room for disagreement, and if there isn't room for disagreement, then we've really lost something and democracy has lost a great deal. Thank you to the law school for being an institution which fosters divergent thought, which fosters disagreeing with each other without being disagreeable, which fosters conflicting arguments without being critical, and that most of all teaches us to listen as much as we want to speak. And so I'm grateful to the law school for all of that, because I think it is a critical element in our community, and it's hard to imagine the democracy without a law school. So thank you Roger Williams Law School for all of that, and thank you particularly for all the hope that you give all of us who are going to be practicing law for the next decade or two or three as I threaten my kids every now and then. But you give us a form in which it's not only permissible, it's encouraged to be argumentative. It's in herds to disagree with somebody, but to do it in a way that fosters learning, not just anger and disagreement. And I think it'll happen because of the institution and the role of the place, but I also think that one of the things I'd all ask you to remember is that there will come a time for many of you that you will be celebrating your 50th law school reunion. That seems inconceivable to some of you in here, I'm sure. But when it comes or even before that, you can remember that the person you're arguing with across the table was the person you played volleyball with or something like that when you're in law school. And the law school plays a major role, I think, and what a success it's been. Who would have ever dreamed 10 years ago, 15 years ago, the law school would bring over 300 people together for dinner on a Friday night. And we don't all agree with each other, but we agree to disagree. Thank you to the law school. Thank you for the people who are the leadership of the law school for giving us this opportunity and for making it available, not just for us, but for all the generations to follow. Thank you so much. I don't know about you, but I thought that was fantastic. Mr. Mann, thank you for a lifetime of service. Andy, thank you for introducing him. Mr. Mann, you've made an enormous difference in your career in a way that reverberates through the decades and into the future. You have been a consistent advocate for your clients and for justice. You have made our country and our state a better place. Thank you for all that you've done and thank you for what you represent. So before we bring our formal close program to a close, I have to remind you again about the silent auction, which raises money for our important work. It ends at 8.30 and the bar, now you're paying attention, the bar closes at that time as well. So I ask you to do two final things to support our law school and our programs. First, stay around and visit. While the bar remains open and second, please submit your silent auction bids to support the law school's social justice program. Your support matters in so many ways, it will ensure that we continue to be the law school that Rhode Island deserves and needs. So this brings us to the end of our evening and I want to thank you for your time again tonight for supporting us. Your time is very valuable and we appreciate you spending it with us. Everyone here tonight, certainly our champions for justice, but everyone else too is a part of our success at the law school today and in the future, all of you. And I want to leave you with this. If you are a graduate of our law school or a student at our law school, or your law school, and if you are not a graduate of our law school, we are still your law school. We are Rhode Island's law school and we are fiercely proud of that. That is our mission, that is our purpose, that is what drew me here three years ago when I decided to apply for this job and I couldn't be luckier that the faculty and the staff and the president asked me to join this community and come here. And together with my faculty and staff colleagues and our students, the future lawyers and leaders of Rhode Island and across the nation in a legal profession, we will continue to succeed and we will continue to make the world a better place. One class, one clinic, one new center for race and the law at a time. Thank you very much. Have a wonderful week.