Matt Constantino (they/them) is a mouthy queer and non-binary abolitionist who spent most of their twenties making art, going dancing, and protesting the corporate oligarchic state with their friends in New York. They are descended from Italian peasants who immigrated through Ellis Island in the earliest part of the twentieth century and eventually settled on occupied Lenape and Wappinger lands. They are a leftist, but they’ll fight for you if you’re not.
They are a white person doing the work of equity and inclusion, which happened in large part because no one else ran for this position in the last election. They understand that, as a person of relatively great privilege, their job as Vice President of Equity & Inclusion is to stick their neck out the furthest for those who are most disadvantaged by the current conditions of inequity and exclusion along lines of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and gender identity manifest in every level and venue of legal education and practice. As your advocate, they sincerely hope you will contact them directly about any problems you encounter while you are a student at this school.
They believe that the curriculum of every law school in the country would be better off if we humbly admitted that we are upholding certain indefensible traditions, and proceeded immediately to the creation and practice of a more accessible, antiracist, and liberatory pedagogy. They also recognize the value in smaller piecemeal reforms to reduce the harm done to the mental and physical health of students—especially students who are non-white, disabled, queer, women, or otherwise marginalized under the current regime—but they do not believe in compromising before getting to the negotiating table.
They believe that law schools’ status as laboratories for Christofascist bad faith constitutional interpretation has jumped out into the public view, and that fascism, authoritarianism, and the establishment of an official or effectively official state religion must be given no quarter. They believe that any pretense that we are not living through an incredibly dangerous moment in U.S. legal history during which a virulently racist, sexist, xenophobic, and anti-queer jurisprudence is being laundered through the most respected and powerful legal institutions is untenable and frankly ridiculous.
They believe a white professor who uses a racial slur in a classroom should be removed from a position where he can cause more harm, and probably fired.
Matt is working this fall with Cascade AIDS Project to draft and lobby for legislation affecting people living with HIV/AIDS in the Pacific Northwest. They are most interested in the treatment and eradication of HIV/AIDS in correctional facilities, where HIV/AIDS and other sexually communicable diseases sicken and kill more people than they do the rest of the U.S. populace.
They would love to talk to you about your thoughts on your experiences as a law student, whatever poems you’re reading, and probably any little thing.
Vice President of Equity & Inclusion