Oil Spill Lecture Draws Students, Locals
In a sign that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is still a hot-button issue for south Louisiana residents as well as an active interest of students, members from both groups gathered on Aug. 30 for the first in a series of campus lectures analyzing the environmental disaster.
Filling a lecture room at Tulane Law School, community residents and students attend the opening lecture on the BP environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo by Alicia Duplessis Jasmin)
The first lecture, “A Litigator's Glimpse at the Horizon,” was jointly presented by attorneys Scott Bickford, who represents Mike Williams, one of the last crew members to escape the burning rig; Stuart Smith, an environmental plaintiff lawyer; and Joel Waltzer, who represents the Pointe-au-Chien Indian tribe.
Each attorney discussed his particular case, and then the three held a question-and-answer session with audience members.
Law student Ling Li was among those in the audience.
“I'm from a different country so things work differently than they do here,” says Li. “I came today because I want to hear how the private and the public sectors handle this type of disaster. Today was good because we got to hear from actual players involved.”
The second lecture in the eight-part series, “Blowout: What Happened and What Went Wrong?,” takes place today (Sept. 7) at 4 p.m. Hosted by the Tulane Law School, the series is held in room 110 of Weinmann Hall on the uptown campus.
The opening lecture drew a crowd large enough to require an overflow room from where the lecture was viewed via a video screen.
For more information, visit the law school website. All lectures are free and open to the public.
