Class of 2015 Events

Dear Class of 2015—

I hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy. This has not been the year that any of us expected, and a virtual reunion is certainly not how I imagined we’d be celebrating this weekend (I, for one, was expecting more of a Dutch-Goose / sit-in-the-sun-in-Crocker-Garden type of weekend). But onwards we go, and forward goes Stanford Law School.

That last part is where I’m hoping you can help. Typically, an SLS reunion features a fundraising campaign aimed at securing five-year donation pledges from graduates of each class that is celebrating. That type of campaign didn’t feel right for our class this year; so many of us are thinking about job changes, hustling to support family members who have lost jobs, or are just generally uncertain about what comes next. So instead of a five-year pledge, this year we’re hoping you can make a one-time gift as part of 72-hour fundraising blitz to raise money for the Law Fund and for SLS’s financial aid efforts. We’ve created a special link for our class here (law.stanford.edu/2015blitzcampaign) and we’ll be tracking our progress over the weekend. We’re hoping that 50% of you will consider making a donation of whatever amount feels right for you.

SLS—like so many institutions—is grappling with the dual crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and systematic racial injustice. Your gifts during this weekend’s campaign will be earmarked for the types of programs that provide aid directly to SLS students confronting these problems like LRAP (Loan Repayment Assistance Program), Summer Public Interest Funding programs, and Postgraduate Public Interest Fellowships, just to name a few. Any gifts made this weekend will be matched 1-to-1 from a pool of funds donated just for this purpose. Let’s put that money to good use – in case you missed it, the donation link is here.

Writing this message is bittersweet. I miss you all so much, and I was so looking forward to sharing old memories and celebrating new successes with good friends. But I’m excited by this campaign and by the opportunity our class has to help get the law school and its students through this tough time. I hope you’ll join in. And I hope you’re just all the more excited to come together next year.

 

Warmly,

James Barton, BA ’09, JD ’15