by Jeffrey Stanley
“It was an opportunity to bounce off the 500 ideas of what you want to do with your life. You were surrounded by great people who would encourage you to explore all the possibilities.”
Melorra Sochet ’84 was recalling what she loved best about her years at BFS. Today she is a busy civil rights lawyer for the city’s youth. She gave a quick review of her professional work to date via telephone between meetings. “My career has had lots of meanderings but it’s all related.”
After graduating BFS Melorra went to Columbia University for a bachelor’s degree. It was there that she had her first brush with the law. “I’d been arrested at Columbia when I was involved in anti-apartheid demonstrations, and I was represented by William Kunstler one summer.” Kunstler, the flamboyant and controversial civil rights lawyer, is perhaps most famous for having defended 1960s radicals Abbie Hoffman and the rest of the “Chicago Seven.” He left an impression on her. “I decided I wanted to be a civil rights lawyer.”
She went on to obtain a law degree from Northeastern University and then went to work in employment discrimination cases and representing labor unions in their suits against large employers. Ultimately though she became disillusioned with the David and Goliath model of taking on individuals’ cases against large organizations, even though she was winning cases. “The litigation itself was not always getting us the results we were hoping for, and was really brutal on the client. And even when you got a success the underlying institutional issue would remain.”
She switched gears and decided to work more on changing discriminatory policies in a broader sense rather than just representing individuals. “I went to the US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights.” There, she worked to change institutionalized discrimination in public schools; for example, trying to change policies which allowed some minority students to be automatically placed in special education classes simply because they were from economically depressed neighborhoods. “I worked there for several years and then went to work at a place called the Vera Institute of Justice.”
That “place” as she humbly called it is an internationally acclaimed civil rights organization founded in the early 1960s. Vera most recently made headlines this June when it released to the US Congress an in-depth report on violence and abuse in correctional facilities nationwide, calling attention to the mental and physical health care shortcomings in the treatment of prisoners. Melorra remained involved primarily with Vera’s youth and education programs, focusing on kids stuck in the juvenile justice system. “Once they’re arrested they drop out of school and never go back,” she said. This pattern encourages youth to remains criminals as adults. She also worked on school safety issues, “figuring out how administrators can use nonpunitive measures and still make schools safer.”
In 2002 she was selected by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a renowned nonprofit organization devoted to improving opportunities for disadvantaged youth, to become a Leadership Fellow. She was proud to be among the few individuals chosen every year to receive this honor and the training it provides to help committed professionals better serve children and families in their home communities.
Soon she was working in the New Jersey Office of the Child Advocate, an agency created by the governor to help improve the lives of at-risk children in that state. Melorra admitted that after a year, she could no longer handle the daily commute from New York City to Trenton and sought work a little closer to her home turf.
In 2004 she was asked to run a commission created by the New York City Council to determine how state education money should be spent in the city’s schools. She and the commission drafting plans, conducted interviews and held public hearings “In the end we came up with a comprehensive plan for how to improve the New York City educational system.”
Shortly afterwards, she took her present job as Director of Accountability, Assessment and Communications at Turnaround for Children, a nonprofit which brings mental health and support services to the city’s children. According to the organization’s website their “comprehensive approach removes barriers to learning, provides connections to caring adults, and breaks destructive cycles while giving children the tools and support they need to succeed.” Melorra explained that their outreach isn’t just to at-risk students, but to their teachers, administrators and parents. A major goal is to improve the overall conditions for learning in an urban child’s life, not just buying textbooks and school supplies. Melorra’s job is to respond to funders’ requests and to make sure the program is of the highest quality possible with demonstrable results.
These are difficult societal tasks from which most people would walk away but Melorra has always embraced these challenges. She credits BFS with helping her understand that a difference can be made in one’s community. “I am flooded by memories of Brooklyn Friends. They were the most formative years of my life, more than college or graduate school,” she said. “I think that’s in large part due to the powerful connections I created there.” She said BFS taught her that she could do anything she wanted to do. “They looked at each kid’s idiosyncracies, what made them special, and helped that to blossom.”
Melorra lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan but her parents loved BFS so much they let her commute every day. “The only time I didn’t do that was during the subway strike, and then I stayed in Brooklyn for a week at [classmate] Jane Abramowitz’s house.” Today she has resettled on the Upper West Side and she recently married.
She remembers her first advisor, Stanley Brimberg in the Middle School, and how he helped her transition into BFS from a much smaller school. She loved English with Ron Patterson, and remembers in particular a mock trial in Rudy Jordan’s class in which she got to play a lawyer. “Perhaps that’s partly why I went into law.”
The school’s emphasis on public service also influenced her. “Even though you were an individual you were taught that you could make changes. You could create communities of change and be even more powerful but you could also create change all by yourself.”