By Beth Brosnan
For honors history major Sarah Lawton, Class of 2023, her full-time position in the office of at-large City Councilor Julia Mejia isn’t just a job, it’s an education. “It feels like a free university,” she says. “I am learning every single day.” Lawton serves as Mejia’s community partnerships liaison for Boston’s 23 different neighborhoods, assisting with outreach events and helping residents understand how to use the levers of local government to create change.
At Suffolk, Lawton has served as treasurer of the Black Student Union and as the founder and chair of the BSU Outreach Committee. She helped bring Yusef Salaam—a member of the Exonerated Five and one of the country’s most compelling champions for criminal justice reform—to campus to speak.
While she entered Suffolk as a law major, she had a conversion experience in a history class with Suffolk’s Black Studies program. “It was the first time I took a course that was dedicated to understanding myself and my ancestors,” says Lawton, who switched her major to history with a minor in Black Studies and was selected for the McNair Scholars program.
She’s continuing to learn now from Mejia, Boston’s first Afro-Latina council member. “Boston is like many worlds wrapped in one,” says Lawton, who grew up in Dorchester. “I want to learn everything I can to make things better for everyone.”
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Photograph by Michael J. Clarke
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