Five Law Students Chosen as Cohen Scholars

03/19/2007

Five Law Students Chosen as Cohen Scholars

 2007 Cohen Scholars
From left: Joseph Sarcinella; Helene Fenlon, Executive Director of
Alumni Relations & External Affairs; Scott Seymann; Madeline Vera;
Paul Singleton and Judge Bruce R. Cohen. (Not pictured: Alba Jaramillo) 
     Paul Singleton, a first-year law student at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, was recently chosen as the winner of the 2007 Cohen Professionalism Scholars competition, based on an essay he wrote about integrity.
     Honorable mentions were given to four other first-year law students: Joseph Sarcinella, Alba Jaramillo, Scott Seymann and Madeline Vera.
     The annual contest is sponsored by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Bruce R. Cohen, an alumnus of the law school, and his wife, Loren. Winners receive a cash award ($600 for the winner and $350 for honorable mentions), a plaque and a trip to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles for a private tour.
     "I am always inspired in reading your essays," Cohen said when announcing the awards at a recent Dean's Session for first-year students. "You all have a great deal to offer from what I read."
     Cohen said Sarcinella's essay showed a real understanding of himself, Jaramillo's showed that students experience challenges but are on the right track,Seymann's blues song was very creative, and Vera allowed people to see inside her soul.
     Although he said it was difficult, Cohen chose Singleton as the winner.
     Cohen said the essay was like reading a novel, seeing a film or having a spiritual experience.
      "Your essay showed that you are interested not about the path you chose to take, but about how you take the path," he said.
     "Don't lose the part of yourselves I saw in fighting for a grade, fighting for a job, to pass the bar or to land that client," Cohen said. "You will learn that if you hold on to who you are, you will do all those things."
     Singleton wrote about a dreamlike scenario, where he is forced to choose between one of two doors, one that shows his future if he chooses to take a lucrative corporate law job that could help his family climb out of poverty and the other that shows how he could help his community with a career that may be less lucrative.
     The guide in his scenario tells him that, sometimes you go through one door and there is no wall between the two futures, but sometimes you pick one path and it never crosses the other.
     Singleton picks one, although he doesn't reveal which one.
     "Smiling, I cross the threshold, knowing I made the right decision," he wrote.
     Sarcinella described his commitment to the sacred Sundancer ceremony of his mother's Lakota and Assiniboine nations. The commitment requires four years of moral conduct, no alcohol or drugs, and participation in religious ceremonies that include fasting, purification, dancing and praying for those who are suffering.
     The commitment is purely personal. Completion does not gain the participant praise, nor does lack of completion carry negative consequences.
     At any time, it would have been easy to cheat, Sarcinella wrote.
     So the question is whether integrity is doing what is right when people are watching or when no one is watching.
     "I believe the answer is quite clear," Sarcinella concludes. "A person of true integrity is not the person that holds true to their convictions and beliefs, doing that which they believe to be correct, when others know, care or could be affected, but the person who holds firm to their convictions when the person that they have to answer to is looking them square in the mirror."
     Jaramillo wrote about working with maquiladoras on a reforestation project. She described her struggle, feeling that maquiladoras had exploited her parents and degraded the environment in Nogales, yet believing that the reforestation project was important and good for Nogales.
     Others criticized her for working with the maquiladoras, and when the company abandoned the project, she wondered if she had been used.
     "As a future lawyer, I expect to be faced with similar ethical dilemmas that involve balancing my political beliefs and my duty to my clients against the needs of my firm," she wrote.
     "I'm not sure that I will know what to do when I am faced with these issues," she continued. "For whatever it's worth, it will not be the first time that I am forced to make a choice regarding ethics and my political beliefs. I will make a choice based on what my ethics tell me.
     "I am convinced that I will only be a successful attorney if I know myself well. And I am convinced that I will only be a happy attorney if I remain true to myself."
     Seymann put his thoughts to music, writing a blues song titled Integrity.
     He sings about different moral dilemmas, then concludes with:

     Well I don't get no satisfaction
     From big houses or fancy cars
     In a lifeboat or on a battlefield
     They won't get you very far

     I just want to be remembered
     For the one thing I can't lose
     In a fire a flood or a lawsuit
     And no judge can ever recuse

     Vera writes about the image she sees in the mirror and fighting the urge to lie to oneself.
     "Everything and everyone in this world lies," Vera writes. "I do not even trust myself; often my mind lies to me with denial."
     She writes about guilt over any dishonesty.
     "Just for today, I will not lie, even to myself," she concludes. "Maybe just for today, I will break that web."

Paul Singleton's essay
A. Joseph Sarcinella's essay
Alba Jaramillo's essay
Scott Seymann's song
Scott Seymann's lyrics
Madeline Vera's essay

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