
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 13, 1991                   TAG: 9103130433
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CAMPUS POLICY/ NO CREDIT FOR W&L LAW SCHOOL

THE LAW faculty at Washington and Lee University decided last week to remain morally fashionable. Under threat of a law-school accrediting body, it reaffirmed a policy, set initially in February, that effectively bans the military from recruiting on the law-school campus.

To be sure, the policy has a politically correct patina: The military discriminates against homosexuals - a practice that is wrong, but which has been sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Law professors who believe that sexual preference has nothing to with one's ability to be a good soldier, or a good lawyer-soldier, see the campus recruitment policy as a way to send a message to the armed services.

They're right, but it is the wrong way.

In an ironic reversal from the '60s, students now agitate to allow military recruiters on campus, and the university establishment resists. More than 60 percent of W&L's law students have signed petitions protesting the faculty policy.

The core of the issue is the Association of American Law Schools' decree that its member law schools - as a requirement for accreditation - amend anti-discriminatory policies to include homosexuals as a protected group. By extension of the rule, recruiters who discriminate are banned.

Law schools at Virginia's state-supported institutions decided not to comply with the requirement. It should be noted, though, that University of Virginia President John T. Casteen III last month suspended a policy restraining recruitment by the armed services, the CIA and the FBI at the university's law school only after 53 state lawmakers sent a protest letter.

The legislators reminded Casteen that state law requires military recruiters to have unimpeded access to public campuses and "At Mr. Jefferson's University, the freedom to pursue employment opportunities with such vital employers as the CIA, FBI and U.S. Armed Services should not be infringed upon by oligarchical edicts."

Casteen himself made the strongest case against the AALS requirement. Among his arguments: "All of us recognize that it is the nature of the university to include, not to exclude; to foster debate, not to stifle it . . . . [The accreditation requirement] seems at odds with the concept of free association and free expression" that is supposed to thrive in a university setting.

Private schools may be in less of a position to stand up to the AALS than state-supported institutions, particularly one with the national stature that UVa's law school enjoys. Accreditation is crucial to prospective students and to prospective employers of graduates.

But, as W&L's law school Dean Randall Bezanson observes, there are substantial reasons to wonder if the AALS has overstepped its bounds. As an accrediting agency, its principal responsibility is educational quality. Sexual orientation "is tangentially related to that at best," notes Bezanson.

Precisely. And it's hard to believe the courts wouldn't agree, if some brave law school - filled, presumably, with lawyers who know a thing or two about filing suits - were to challenge the AALS's edicts.

Professors who oppose discriminatory practices by the military have many good recourses, including supporting the election of officials who will end such practices. But it is troubling when academicians use dictates to silence those who don't agree with them. And it's wrong for an accrediting agency to force campus exclusion of politically incorrect recruiters.

by CNB