Michaela Hawthorne

Five percent of U.S. lawyers are African American according to a 2024 report from the the American Bar Association. To Temi Adediji, ‘27 and Collin Hughley ‘27, these numbers are reflected in the lack of diversity in Stetson’s pre-law program.Back in January 2025, Hughley scrolled Instagram and realized that his future career prospects have expanded, leading him to Fall Semester 2025, where his goal to change the lives of future attorneys would take root at Stetson.

The current Stetson student’s childhood might have looked like “Wizards of Waverly Place” on television, sounded like kitten heels click-clacking down the street and felt like head-banging at a house party to a live performance by the All-American Rejects. Yet Stetson students don’t need to sleep to flashback to this reality, these things have all happened in 2025. The 2000s revival begs the question of why the era is coming back so soon, considering we only had one decade to breathe.

I always felt intimidated as a woman to train for self-defense. I had accepted a life where I would walk down dark streets on trepid alert, mace and a safety alarm equipped in my bag. I always wanted to learn to fight but I grew up in an early 2000s world where the representation of strong female fighters was mostly fictional and overly sexualized. The girls I knew who trained in self-defense sports, like wrestling or karate, were such a rarity that I worshipped them as akin to the goddess Athen