University of Idaho second-year law student Tiana Stowers has been awarded a prestigious fellowship with the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. The bureau provides pro bono legal service in civil matters to low income clients. Their commitment to ensuring equal access to justice is one that Stowers shares.
“I am passionate about issues that deal with women and children – social services and policies, government benefits, housing and education," said Stowers. "I was a teenage single parent. I wanted to have my child and still continue to pursue my education and career goals, but it’s very difficult to pursue your dreams on welfare. There are barriers in our system that prevent young mothers from being more than just average. You are either barely making it on your own, or you are dependent on the state to survive.”
Stowers has worked for the past decade to help change that, and now focuses on law and public policy that relates to domestic violence and victims rights for women and children.
In high school, Stowers participated in Running Start, a statewide program that allowed her to finish high school and earn college credit simultaneously. She began her career working as a legal assistant for a private practice on Mercer Island shortly after high school graduation and completion of a legal administrative assistant program. She served as a legal assistant for approximately a year before leaving for Washington State University. In her first two years as a student at WSU, she worked as a clerical assistant at the Center for Human Rights, and continued her work as a legal assistant when home in the Seattle area on student breaks. She eventually worked her way up to a paralegal position at a small family law practice in Seattle. While both working and attending school, Stowers also raised her son, Antonio McKale Wiggins Jr., now 12.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from WSU (2005), and looks forward to her juris doctorate from the University of Idaho in 2008. She has volunteered with non-profit organizations to ensure quality child care and education, and has organized volunteer law clinics to educate young parents about child custody and child support issues.
Stowers competed with a large pool of highly qualified applicants, many from top 20 law schools, who apply each year for the HLAB summer fellowship. She is one of 12 fellows chosen for 2007.
Last summer she interned with the New Destiny Housing Corporation, a New York non-profit specializing in affordable housing solutions for domestic violence survivors and their children. Her job included researching the new housing policy initiated in New York City, which inadvertently made it more difficult for domestic violence survivors and victims to find housing. The failure of that policy sent many women back to their batterers, and was reflected in higher death rates for battered women in New York.
“My internship with New Destiny was a remarkable experience because it allowed me to see the far reaching effects of law and policy,” said Stowers. “I saw first hand the complications that policymakers and government officials face when establishing and implementing new law and policy, and how difficult it is for citizens to hold their officials accountable when the implementation of such law and policy impede upon their constitutional rights. I was so moved by my internship experience that I wrote a research paper for my local government class that used the DV housing crisis in New York as a framework to establish an argument for finding a municipality liable where its law and policy enhances danger that its domestic violence victims face.”
As a HLAB Fellow, Stowers will serve as a student advocate, litigating in civil court for clients who otherwise could not afford legal representation. Essentially, she will function as a working lawyer. Oversight of the 12 fellows is provided by credentialed attorneys. Her University of Idaho education has helped prepare her to take on that role.
“I worked as a family law paralegal for a while, so I have practical hands-on experience working with clients and with document preparation,” said Stowers. “Working as a paralegal I learned a lot, but I did not learn the theory behind law that allows you to see the big picture. Now I understand how much work attorneys actually do before they turn over assignments to their paralegals. I’m learning the other side of law – research and theory. My experience here at the University of Idaho helped me see that part.”
Stowers takes her success, challenges and hard work in stride. That perspective comes from being one of “a long line” of strong women. Her grandmother raised 13 children, worked and attended school. Her mother also was at one time a single teenage parent who worked and pursued a college education with two young children. Her stepmother did the same. “I’m just one of a whole bunch of strong women who have done this,” said Stowers. “Juggling the responsibilities of home, work and school is nothing new. Women do this all the time.”
Stowers heads to Cambridge, Mass., to begin the fellowship in mid-May.
***The head of the Human Rights Office at Idaho is also a Delta***
http://www.supportui.uidaho.edu/defa...ampaign=042407
Another article from the student paper about her.
http://www.uiargonaut.com/content/view/3705/88/