Real People Profiles: Jonathan Law

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 09:15:00 -0500
real-people-profiles

Name: Jonathan Law

Hometown: I grew up in Silver Spring, now live in Boyds, and went to high school in Rockville, so I consider myself a Montgomery County resident at large.

Q: How long have you been at UMBC?

A: This is my fourth year!

Q: What is your current title (job or student organization position)?

A: I am the Representative Liaison for QUMBC, VP of Volunteers with Major Inspiration. I'm also in SGA's Health and Wellness and WILL (Women Involved with Leadership and Learning).

Q: In 12 words or less, what role(s) do you play on campus?

A: Collaborating to create social justice actions at UMBC. Oh, and take classes?

Q: What aspect of your UMBC role(s) do you enjoy most?

A: I love the idea of training little activists. At QUMBC, we have developed a horizontal structure that emphasizes members developing the skills to implement their own ideas to change the community. Basically, I want QUMBC to drive David Hoffman out of his job.

Q: What is the most important or memorable thing you learned in college/have learned at UMBC?

A: The strengths perspective in social work. It is taught in opposition to the problem-centered perspective, which emphasizes clients as problems that need to be solved by social workers. Instead, the strengths perspective wants social workers to acknowledge clients as the experts and masters of their own lives and that social workers are there to advocate for clients and empower them to change their own lives.

Q: Complete this sentence: "I am a big fan of __________"

A: Context. Reductionism is my archenemy; I just want to contextualize, historicize, and complicate everything. It makes it difficult to create solutions when your problems are big and ancient instead of mindless beasts to slay, but that's what you have to do if you really want to effect change. You can't just focus on saving the deer when preserving an ecosystem or just hand a patient a prescription when treating them for a chronic problem: you have to situate problems in the greater context and in the systems involved. (And that is when you smash the patriarchal capitalist state.)

Q: Do you have any UMBC stories, little-known facts about UMBC, favorite spots on campus, or anything else you’d like to share?

A: The professors and staff around you are not just teachers. They are (sometimes) amazing people with great stories and experience and knowledge and you need to tap that like they're maple trees and you have the driest pancakes ever. Talk to them, connect with them!

If nothing else, they may be more lenient with your final grade when you're BFFs.