The University of Arkansas-Little Rock’s William H. Bowen School of Law began as UA-Fayetteville’s night division (yes, in Little Rock) in 1965. A decade later, the Legislature created UA-Little Rock’s law school; transferred thereto Fayetteville’s night program; and added a full-time component.

In 2023, Colin Crawford became Bowen’s dean. Shortly thereafter, he suggested killing Bowen’s in-person night program and replacing it with yet another online law school. When confronted with a buzzsaw of opposition in Arkansas’ legal community, Crawford paused this misadventure.

Today, Arkansas-based part-time law students have the option of either attending the state’s only in-person night law school or enrolling in one of several existing online schools. If Bowen’s night program goes online, Arkansans lose this choice.

Last week, I wrote about state Sen. Dan Sullivan’s efforts to curtail new attempts to replace Bowen’s night program with an online one and his delivery of Ten Commandments posters to Bowen for display.

I relayed Crawford’s unexpected public inquisition of Sullivan, wherein Crawford charged: “So you brought those 19 [framed Ten] Commandments to the law school. You could have gone [elsewhere] . . . but you came here to the law school, and I believe, haven’t gone elsewhere . . . [And] you also then submitted a piece of ‘special legislation’ that would have had the effect of tying up the university budget if, if the law school did not, was, was not prohibited from having an online program. So the question is, because I’ve been asked it many times, what’s [your] beef with us. Why [are you] singling out the school of law?”

Sullivan answered, correcting Crawford’s misrepresentations: “First of all, I’m not singling [the law school] out. I took [the posters previously] to Jonesboro schools. I think I had 400 that I took–close to that–[and] I took [several of] them to Arkansas State University . . . [And] why did I take the position of putting a hold on the [university’s] budget? [I did so] because I had a number of people in the law school and outside of law school, former graduates–people who are attorneys that went to school here that are now in the profession–[raise concerns]. People talk[ed] about retaliation; they were afraid to–if they brought [concerns]–they’d be retaliated against.”

My colleague Josh Silverstein elaborated on the retaliation: “The dean castigated me in my annual review for my opposition to moving the part-time program online and, surprisingly, for criticisms against the online proposal leveled by others whom I don’t control. He later accused me of resisting the change in bad faith, even though much of the Bowen community is similarly opposed.”

The saga continues.

In August, I wrote a column–which this paper nominated for several journalism awards–stating:

“Why put the Bowen night class online in the first place? At a recent faculty meeting, an administrator stated that the purpose is to enlarge the night class. She highlighted that the incoming night class has 38 students. But that’s not the whole story. Here’s the rest:

” m Both the forthcoming day and night classes have been closed for some time, because they’re completely full.

” m The night class has 38 students in it simply because the school capped the class at 38–not due to lack of demand. Earlier in the year, the class was capped at 40, and it had–you guessed it–40 students. The administration then reduced the size of the night class to 38. If you want the night class to be larger than 38, then allow it to be larger than 38.

” m If the school wants to enroll a larger night class with, say, 50 students, we could do so with qualified folks ready to attend.

“    m Finally, the school’s admissions policy states: ‘The Law School will enroll each academic year an entering class of approximately 140 applicants to its combined full and part-time divisions.’ The current incoming class has 158 students. Call me old school, but I don’t understand this new math in which having 18 extra students reflects under-enrollment.”

That column remains 100 percent correct, because this paper and I painstakingly verify our information. That column’s source: Bowen’s then-admissions dean. (She also confirmed the information presented today.)

Nonetheless, in my annual evaluation at Bowen, Crawford took issue with the contents of that previous column, which I wrote as a journalist for this paper. (My Democrat-Gazette boss assures me that he won’t be evaluating my law-school performance–nor my cooking, for that matter!)

Crawford wrote: “I write to offer observations about certain activities of yours during the evaluation period that were disruptive to the School of Law community. Specifically, in summer 2025, you publicly stated that the School of Law had ‘excess demand’ for its part-time program that the administration has capped enrollment in the program. However, as reported to the faculty earlier in the Spring by the then Assistant Dean of Admissions, many of the students admitted to the part-time program preferred to be in the full-time program, for which there were no available spaces. There was no excess demand for the part-time program and that was announced at a faculty meeting. Moreover, as the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs has reported on many occasions, the number of any class is dictated by our faculty capacity to cover the labor-intensive research and writing classes–each to a section of no more than 20 students. Inaccurate references to an excess of demand and administrative caps on part-time enrollment were harmful to the work of your colleagues, who, earlier in 2025, voted overwhelmingly in support of a proposal to develop a hybrid part-time program; some of them spent their summers developing courses to that end.”

Crawford is wrong: Bowen did cap the night class, and there was excess demand.

Bowen admitted 38 students to that night class. The admissions dean stated that Bowen easily could’ve enrolled 50 qualified applicants. So why only 38? As Crawford confessed: because of a lack of supply of faculty. Fifty qualified applicants, but only 38 admitted, equals excess demand (by definition).

Bowen’s math further confounds. In a faculty meeting, the associate dean stated: “[W]e have 38 students coming into the part-time program . . . [and] nine of them expressed a preference for the full-time. So if we had space in the full-time, that would have been down to 29.”

Uh, no. The school admitted 38 applicants. If nine vanished, Bowen would just admit the next nine.

Moreover, whether nine students preferred the day program is irrelevant. Maybe some favored attending Yale. Wanting to go elsewhere doesn’t diminish demand for Bowen’s night school–when the alternatives aren’t available.

In fact, the day program routinely cannibalizes the night class by exceeding the school’s written-policy goal of 90 students for the former by–wait for it–30-plus students. Wanna guess where that overage should’ve been offered admission? Yep, the night school.

Finally, like with Silverstein, Crawford bizarrely criticized me for the contents of a student column that opposed Bowen going online, because those authors thanked us for our input. Even worse, the dean was explicitly informed that I never reviewed the substance of the students’ article and Silverstein recommended written changes to the very items Crawford whinged about. Sigh.

The proposal to put online Arkansas’ singular-historic night law school didn’t fail because disfavored interlocutors contradicted the party line or had “beef” with Bowen. Rather, that effort collapsed because it is an awful idea (and justifiably reviled by Arkansas’ legal community).

So, rest assured, I will continue to inform you Dear Readers about this topic and others–threadbare false claims of inaccuracy, harm, or disruption notwithstanding–because facts matter.

This is your right to know.

Robert Steinbuch, the Arkansas Bar Foundation Professor at the Bowen Law School, is a Fulbright Scholar and author of the treatise “The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.” His views do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.

The Soldiers, who were on duty for annual training, jumped into action after three Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks were involved in a mishap. The first two trucks in the convoy stopped, but the third 10-ton tactical heavy transport truck was unable to stop and veered left to miss but collided with the rear of the middle truck. Each of the four Soldiers were awarded Meritorious Service Medals for their actions in the aftermath of the mishap.

“We’re going to recognize these NCOs,” Brig. Gen. Chad Bridges, Arkansas’ adjutant general told an assembled platoon of Soldiers, civic leaders, and news media. “The first stanza of the Noncommissioned Officer Creed is ‘No one is more professional than I.’ And whether they responded on scene or in the helicopter, they were being a noncommissioned officer, and supporting Soldiers, and doing their duty, and doing it in a professional, distinctive way, and giving of themselves to get the mission accomplished and to take care of each other, and to make things better.

Three of the Soldiers: Sgt. Eduardo Salazar, Staff Sgt. Ryan Niblett, and Staff Sgt. Jorge Ramirez assigned to 936th Forward Support Co., 142nd Field Artillery Brigade, provided immediate care and aid to a seriously injured Soldier who was extricated with the help of local first responders using the jaws of life. Their timely use of belts as make-shift tourniquets preserved a Soldier’s life until local emergency medical services could arrive, extract the injured Soldier, and prepare the injured Soldier for transport. The Soldier was airlifted to a hospital — nearly 60 miles by air — in Fayetteville, Ark., and after being stabilized, to a higher level of care 100 miles away by air at a hospital in Springfield, Mo.

Of the other seven injured Soldiers, six were transported by vehicles to a Fort Smith, Ark., hospital. One Soldier was airlifted by a 77th Expeditionary Combat Aviation Brigade UH-72 Lakota to the same Fort Smith, Ark., hospital. The Black Hawk was in the area for annual training, and the crew loitered overhead after learning of the ground mishap to see if their services might be needed for casualty evacuation. The crew airlifted a Soldier for concussion protocol. All seven Soldiers have since returned to duty.

The fourth Soldier recognized was Staff Sgt. James Roach, a flight paramedic. He was recognized for his actions monitoring an injured Soldier while airlifting the Soldier to an area hospital on the Lakota helicopter and the seamless handoff that occurred to a civilian medical care team at the hospital’s heliport to ensure the Soldier received definitive trauma care.

An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the accident. After the accident, a brigade-wide safety stand down went into effect to focus on hazard prevention, review safety procedures and reinforce safety training. Training resumed May 5, 2026.