MUCH LIKE the opponents of a public option in health care reform, those fighting a public law school for Massachusetts (“Bailout of failing school,’’ Op-ed, Oct. 24) have resorted to distortions and untruths in an attempt to taint the review and frighten the public.
The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth has been offered the opportunity by the Board of Trustees of Southern New England School of Law, of which I am chairwoman, to receive $22.5 million in assets composed of land and a fully functioning 300,000-square-foot legal education facility including its library. There will be no cost to the taxpayers of Massachusetts.
Why have we have made this offer? It is the right thing to do for our present and future students, offering them greater opportunities than we can as a freestanding private institution.
Our school operates in the black but with margins that make it difficult to accumulate the kind of financial reserves required for American Bar Association accreditation. Nevertheless, we are accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.
More than 75 percent of our more than 1,200 graduates have passed the bar examination. Our faculty has been described in external accreditation reviews as “our strongest asset,’’ and includes attorneys who have argued before the US Supreme Court.
Decades ago, the powers that be fought to keep the University of Massachusetts from opening a medical school. The private medical schools did not want that competition. Today, how many extraordinary doctors, many of whom could never have afforded to attend a private medical school, proudly hang a UMass Medical School diploma on the walls of their offices?
Margaret D. Xifaras
Dartmouth 
