In 2017, Professor Sara Goldrick-Rab of Temple University published “Basic Needs Security and the Syllabus.” In it, she encouraged professors to adopt a “Basic Needs Policy” in their syllabi as a means of raising awareness about the impact of inequality on learning, while encouraging impacted students to seek out institutional resources.
Associate degree programs have long studied the nexus between access to “basic needs” (i.e., food, housing, health care, transportation, etc.) and student retention. However, law schools have paid scant attention to the issue.
That shifted when law schools transitioned to remote instruction in March 2020. Schools around the country immediately had to contend with students’ lack of technological resources as a barrier to learning. When campuses closed, universities quickly realized they were displacing students who depended on campus infrastructure, like food and housing. Schools also developed contingency plans for students who would get ill or needed to care for sick family members.
Presenters will: (1) speak to their adoption of Basic Needs Policies, as well as students’ responses to the policies; (2) review their respective institution’s capacity to assist students lacking access to basic needs and their attempts to connect students with necessary supports; (3) facilitate discussion in breakout sessions about institutional obligations to aid students lacking basic needs and methods to build institutional capacity to meet those needs; and (4) reconvene attendees and seek to build consensus around institutional obligations and experiential educator’s unique ability to lead their institution’s efforts around a minimum standard of care for our students.