“I’ve just returned from a summer internship in Ghana, and even in rural areas of West Africa, interest in the coming election is extremely high.”
Biography: Brooke I. Curtiss has seen firsthand evidence that concern about this fall’s presidential election reaches far beyond the United States.
“I’ve just returned from a summer internship in Ghana, and even in rural areas of West Africa, interest in the coming election is extremely high,” Curtiss says. “The first question after anyone found out I was an American was, ‘Are you voting for Obama or McCain?'”
“For my graduate research, I’m exploring different legal theories of how to hold municipalities accountable for substandard school buildings that are falling apart and impairing children’s education,” she says. “I want to see if we can find ways to use the law to force governments to fix those buildings or replace them.”
Curtiss and other students are currently working with local high school students to hold mock case law sessions testing the accountability of schools. Before she graduates in 2010, she hopes to help establish a free education law clinic that enables parents to use the law to ensure schools meet all their legal obligations to their children.
Hometown: New York, NY
Major/minor: Graduate student working on joint degree in law and social work
Student contact information: Cell: (917) 517-7351 E-mail: bcurtiss@wustl.edu