BLSA Students Create Laptop Scholarship for Local Teens

BLSA students with a Lenovo laptop in the Green Lounge
From left: Kenechi Chiaghana, '22; Tyree Petty-Williams, '21; Alexandra Green, '22; and Jacob Botros, ’22.

There was once a teenaged debate champ in Detroit who loved his laptop.

It wasn’t a fancy machine: the body was clunky and the silver-colored plastic was somewhat flimsy. But the high school junior had purchased it himself, using $400 he’d won in a regional debate competition, and it had offered advantages he’d never had before. Debate preparation became paperless and more efficient—he could work anywhere, organize his research more effectively, and share documents with his teammates. For the first time, “I was able to do things in real time,” Tyree M. Petty-Williams would remember several years later.

When it was just a few months old, the laptop helped Petty-Williams prepare for a national debate competition, which his team won. It was with him senior year, too, when he rose to team captain and applied to college; he even read his Howard University acceptance letter on its screen. In college, the laptop saw Petty-Williams through countless papers until one day he opened his backpack and discovered that it had cracked open, the result of a quiet and unseen accident.

And so Petty-Williams, an English literature major who would later enroll in the University of Chicago Law School, said goodbye to his first computer. But he never forgot the freedom and power it had bestowed.

Now, Petty-Williams, ’21, is the head of a new Black Law Students Association project aimed at giving local high school students new laptops. The computers— provided with support from State Farm, the BLSA chapter’s sponsor, and Lenovo, the maker of the computers BLSA will distribute—will go to 10 students at Legal Prep Charter Academy, a legal-themed high school on Chicago’s West Side.

“I’ve known for a while that I wanted to start a laptop scholarship—having your own computer can really transform your education,” said Petty-Williams, the president of UChicago’s BLSA chapter.

Last spring, when Legal Prep approached BLSA about providing mentors for one of its programs, Petty-Williams saw a double opportunity: to continue BLSA’s tradition of engaging with Chicago youth and to put his scholarship dream into action. He and several second- and third-year BLSA students signed up as mentors and then Petty-Williams and three of BLSA’s 1L representatives—Kenechi Chiaghana, Alexandra Green, and Jacob Botros, all ’22—floated the idea for the scholarship. The school loved it—and the students set about raising money and planning their pilot.

“When Tyree reached out about the laptop scholarship idea we were very excited,” said Lena Walsh, the development and special programs manager at Legal Prep, a charter school founded in 2009 to help create a pipeline for diversity in the legal profession. Legal Prep students have access to Chromebooks while they are in school, and seniors can earn the right to keep them after graduation. But the capability is limited—Chromebooks are primarily web-based and offer little storage—and they are “often pretty beat up” by graduation, Walsh said.

“Access to a quality laptop means technology literacy for our students,” she said. “It means a piece of the financial burden of post-secondary planning is lifted.” 

Petty-Williams turned to the Law School’s associate dean for external affairs, Carolyn Grunst, for fundraising advice.

“I thought the project was wonderful, and I was happy to provide general guidance and strategize,” Grunst said. “I was tremendously impressed with the students’ commitment to service and to giving back, particularly given all of the other demands on their time.”

Petty-Williams began by pitching State Farm during a one-week summer visit to their Bloomington, Illinois, headquarters, where he spent time learning about the work of their legal department. State Farm agreed to help jumpstart the program with a donation that covered five Lenovo laptops. BLSA then reached out to Lenovo, and the technology company agreed to match State Farm’s gift with an additional five computers.

Legal Prep students will apply for the laptop scholarships early next year, and BLSA expects to announce the winners in the spring.

In the meantime, the Law School students visit the school once a month to work one-on-one with students, and they interact with their mentees via text in between. Green, who remembers how beneficial her own laptop was when she was applying to college and law school, said she was eager to be a part of the effort.

“While the laptop scholarship was Tyree’s brainchild, I wanted to help because it’s important to me to eliminate as many barriers to higher education as possible, especially for students of color,” Green said. “For those that choose to go to college after graduating, the laptop will place them on the right foot to continue their education.”