Published Friday, October 10, 2003 JAG visit sets off protests
BY PHILIP RUCKER Yalie Daily Staff Reporter
Yale Law School students draped the school with black and camouflage fabric
Thursday in protest of a U.S. Navy representative's recruiting visit.
For the third time since the fall of 2002, the Law School waived the application
of its decades-old nondiscrimination policy to military recruiters -- a group
generally barred from campus -- in an effort to retain over $350 million in
federal funding. According to the 1995 Solomon Amendment, the government
requires all colleges and universities that receive federal funding to allow
military recruiters on campus.
Some law schools have banned recruiters from the Judge Advocate General program
because the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexuality
violates nondiscrimination policies. Many other American law schools also made
exceptions to their nondiscrimination recruitment policies in order to preserve
federal research funding.
Yale Law School Dean Anthony Kronman said in an e-mail Thursday that the
school's suspension of its policy for the military recruiters is
"profoundly regrettable."
"It is immoral, and contrary to all the Yale Law School stands for, that
the gay and lesbian students in our community should be victims of
discrimination in any program the school officially sponsors," he said.
"The wound is not just to the victims. It is to us all."
U.S. Navy JAG recruiter Brian Whitaker joined 14 law firms at a Yale recruiting
event Thursday. Only one student was scheduled to meet with Whitaker during the
visit, but that student cancelled the interview, Law School recruiting assistant
Amanda Hilton said.
Whitaker could not be reached for comment.
Over 500 students signed a petition saying they would not interview with JAG
recruiters on campus. The petition hung inside the Law School Thursday as part
of the protest display, which included the black and camouflage wall hangings.
"The fabric was in the Law School because it was symbolic [of] how the
military has invaded our school-sponsored interview program," organizer
Lindsay Barenz LAW '04 said. "[The administration was] very supportive.
They thought it was really creative. Obviously, it was very startling and caught
your attention fairly quickly."
Adam Sofen LAW '05 is one of 14 openly homosexual Yale law students whose
pictures were featured in a display for the protest.
"I think it's a really powerful image that lets people know that this is
not an abstract issue and that it affects people who are their classmates and it
affects people very personally," he said.
Sofen, whose grandfather, brother and uncles are in the Navy, said he would
consider joining his relatives in the Navy if gays and lesbians were permitted
to serve.
In September, a coalition of law schools and the nation's largest group of law
professors sued the U.S. Department of Defense and five other government
agencies, claiming the Solomon Amendment is unconstitutional. Yale is not
involved in this lawsuit. In a similar suit earlier this month, students and
professors at the University of Pennsylvania Law School sued the Defense
Department.
