Theme: ’98 scholar continues to work for social justice

Laura Clemens paid tribute to her grandparents in a moving speech when she accepted her award as one of the 1998 Link scholarship winners on a day that is forever embedded in her mind.

Clemens credited her grandparents, who attended the awards dinner, with inspiring her passion for social issues. They told her stories of how her great-grandparents fought Pennsylvania coal-mine owners in about 1900 for safe working conditions and a livable wage.

“They were very proud of me and of that speech,” Clemens said. “I’ll never forget it.” She added: “Two days later, my grandmother had a stroke and she’s never been the same since.”

Clemens, 24, a 2000 graduate of SUNY Geneseo and a staunch social activist, is currently in her last year at Syracuse Law School.

“My passion is children’s law and children’s rights,” said Clemens, whose goal is to serve as a law guardian advocating for the rights of children in court cases. “They don’t really have a voice in the courts otherwise,” she said. “The courts tend to be an adult world and an adversary one.”

Clemens, who is from the Rochester suburb of Fairport, earned a major in English and a minor in psychology from SUNY Geneseo. She said she knew she wanted to go to law school since she was four years old. Clemens added that her mother is a lawyer and attended law school while Clemens was young.

At Syracuse, Clemens works in the children’s rights and family law clinic. This fall, she was working on a disability law case and an immigration case.

“It’s interesting to do something that actually impacts on someone,” she said. Clemens is also an editor of the Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce and will have published two research articles by the time she graduates.

Clemens spent one summer working at the Legal Aid Society of Rochester, where she worked on several cases involving battered women.

Last summer, she had an internship at the law firm of Woods, Oviatt, Gilman LLP in Rochester and has a full-time job waiting for her there once she graduates.

The firm is supportive of her plans to also serve as a court-appointed law guardian for children, Clemens said.

She said she is proud to be a Geneseo graduate and a Link scholar. The scholarship, Clemens said, was a big help financially and enabled her to avoid taking an off-campus job to pay tuition.

“I have paid for college and law school on my own,” she said.

Clemens said she chose SUNY Geneseo because she wanted to stay near her family in the Rochester area. “My family is very important to me,” she said. “I didn’t want to live at home, but I didn’t want to go too far. I visited Geneseo and felt it was just the place. I’m so glad I went there.”

— Karen Nelis