WMU-Cooley Law School held virtual commencement ceremonies on May 23, honoring 205 juris doctor and seven master of laws degree recipients from the Auburn Hills, Grand Rapids, Lansing and Tampa Bay campuses.
Buddy Faulkner and Roslyn Murrell were chosen by their classmates to present the valedictory remarks, and Judge Jessica Costello from the Hillsborough County, Florida, 13th Judicial Circuit, presented the keynote.
Melissa Heinz of the Grand Rapids campus and Kathryn Kucyk of the Auburn Hills campus were presented with the James E. Burns Memorial Award for graduating summa cum laude; and Comfort Aduwa, who attended the Lansing campus, was recipient of the President’s Achievement Award.
Murrell, who attended the Lansing campus, spoke about the class’ journey through law school.
“We all remember the first day of orientation when we were told that time would go by quickly and by the time we finally look up, we will be done. My fellow graduates look up. We are here now. We have finished the course.”
She spoke about changing from in-person to virtual classes due to the pandemic.
“Suddenly we could not come to campus, but we adapted. It was a rough start for many of us, but we persevered. Our law school experience was like a seed that was planted. That seed was our law school application. When we were accepted we were covered by mountains of coursework that some of us have never experienced before, kind of like being covered with top soil and fertilizer.
We knew it was good for us, but it was also suffocating at times. The seedling was watered by our tears of first year law school exams. It was nourished by so many, our professors and staff who welcomed us openly, by our fellow classmates, and the sunny dispositions of our friends and family who championed us on and always gave us a positive uplifting word.”
Faulkner, from the Tampa Bay campus thanked friends and family of graduates by saying, “without you this marathon might not have been quite as bearable.”
Judge Costello shared the importance of going through law school during the challenging times of the pandemic, the power of resilience.
She shared advice on being resilient, by first referencing the definition of resilient from Black’s Law Dictionary. “ ‘The ability for something to return to its original form after being compressed or stretched, or the ability to recover from or adjust to adversity and change.’ You can definitely say the uncertainty of this past year compressed and stretched us. Importantly, over this past year, we’ve had to function without one of the most important aspects of the human experience, each other. Unfortunately, after the year we have experienced, and unlike the first definition, we will never return to our original form after what we have been through. For that reason I think the second definition of resilience is much more helpful to describe our current state in light of the difficulties we face. We will and we have and shall recover from and adjust to adversity and change.”
Talking about her experience as a lawyer and now a judge she explained how her own resiliency got her to where she is today. Costello shared a time when delivering the closing arguments for a defendant as the youngest lawyer in the courtroom that she had to “rise for the occasion and be resilient.” Costello said, today as a judge, “It does me great joy to see great lawyers do the same in a multitude of ways, because of the extraordinary impact you can have as an advocate for others.”
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