When I became Dean and President of New York Law School, I never imagined I’d be consoling victims of gun violence almost every semester. After the June 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando, I listened in horror and sadness as a student told me about the murder of two close friends. Three months ago, after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, I consoled another student who lost friends. And over the past two years, I have comforted two additional students who each lost a brother to horrendous gun accidents.

I began seeing our school’s connection to the gun violence epidemic just a few weeks into my role as Dean. In July 2012, a gunman in Aurora, Colorado, shot and killed 12 people and injured dozens of others at a movie theater. I soon learned that the Aurora Police Chief was a graduate of our Class of 1986. He would go on to supervise the criminal investigation that followed the shooting. After every one of these violent acts, I write to students and faculty reminding them to maintain perspective, to take the long view, and to remember they are training to be advocates for meaningful change. But after the Parkland shooting, my words started to seem hollow. If now wasn’t the time for me and my community to do something, then when? And then came Santa Fe.

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