The Daily Pennsylvanian :: Mara Gordon

Friday was a peaceful day at Penn's Law School.

The sun was shining; there were rainbow flags everywhere. Students and professors milled around the building, wearing pink shirts and munching on free sandwiches.

It was a protest, but nothing was set on fire. No cops shot rubber bullets, no windows were smashed. The security guard at the building's entrance simply offered anyone who walked in a pink sticker that proclaimed "Shame on JAG." Signs urged passersby in brightly colored letters to "Do ask, do tell."

This is activism, Penn Law style - and it's exactly what our generation should be doing to get our voices heard.

The students, faculty and administrators were protesting the presence of a man named Jon Pavlovcak in a small conference room in the Biddle Law Library. Quiet and unassuming, Pavlovcak recruits new lawyers to join the Judge Advocate General's Corps, the legal wing of the U.S. military.

And as long as the military doesn't let gays and lesbians into its ranks, Penn Law doesn't want recruiters like Pavlovcak on campus.

Friday's protest was the latest episode in a struggle between universities and the military that has gone on for the past several years. Accredited law schools - like Penn's - aren't allowed to let employers that discriminate recruit on campus.

Unfortunately, the federal government disagrees. If a university receives federal funding, the Supreme Court ruled last year, it's required to let the military recruit on its campus. Since Penn gets millions of government dollars, Pavlovcak's presence is a reality.

Lambda Law - the organization for LGBT law students - and Penn Law administrators are working within the system to change this. And slowly but surely, they're showing the military that this nation's young lawyers aren't interested in working for somebody who discriminates.

"We're allowing the military in - under protest," Penn Law's Dean Michael Fitts told the crowd on Friday. "We all look forward to the time when the military allows in its ranks all the wonderful people who are being discriminated against."

Pavlovcak had a full schedule interviewing JAG candidates on Friday, he said. When he arrived there were no blockades, only pink hoodies and polo shirts, signs with slogans like "You give medals for killing men and discharges for loving them."

"Penn Law students tend to be very open-minded, very gentle," said George Clinton, the Law School's associate dean for student affairs. He is openly gay and provided the rainbow flags for the protest from his own activist days.

"They're not here to stop people from interviewing," Clinton continued. They're here "to say to the military, 'You're not here with open arms.'"

That's because Pavlovcak himself is not the problem. Targeting him personally would be a waste of Lambda Law's resources and would de-legitimize their cause.

"I go where I'm supposed to go to do the job I'm supposed to do," he said on Friday.

He didn't plan on interacting with the protestors. Instead, he said, "I'm anticipating going home - getting in my car and seeing my wife and daughter."

Three of the appointments in Pavlovcak's busy schedule were protest interviews, a widely used strategy where law students schedule meetings with a recruiter and don't show up.

At other schools, protest interviewees have even been known to cover their mouths with duct tape as a dramatic gesture of what it feels like to be closeted.

Some Lambda Law protestors showed up to their interviews on Friday, and told Pavlovcak exactly what they thought of "don't ask, don't tell," the military policy that prevents gays and lesbians from coming out.

The protest interview is exactly the kind of tactic Lambda Law should be using in a fight like this one. Pavlovcak said the signs and speeches don't "faze" him, but the protest interviews do waste his time and the government's money.

For the time being, the military, in all its anti-gay glory, will recruit at Penn. It will refuse to hire qualified lawyers because they are out as gays and lesbians, and it will continue to perpetuate homophobia in our country.

But soon, recruiters like Pavlovcak will get sick of seeing protests in their honor. They will grow tired of spending their days in empty conference rooms, waiting for interviewees who don't show up. They will regret losing qualified LGBT applicants to employers that don't discriminate.

Penn and Lambda Law have the right idea in taking a practical stance on this issue. The military won't change its policy tomorrow, but thanks to their activism, they can slowly chip away at it.

Mara Gordon is a College junior from Washington, D.C. Her e-mail address is gordon@dailypennsylvanian.com. Flash Gordon appears on Thursdays.

Comments (6)

Don't ask dont tell is great. Why the hell should I care what sorts of crazy things youre into, in the sack? Homosexuality is an overblown fetish. You don't see people who like to do it in peanut butter all in ur face do you? Those ppl know how to roll.

[QUOTE id="16664a16-1d19-4ef8-a5d2-0bf2d5741af2"]Don't ask dont tell is great. Why the hell should I care what sorts of crazy things youre into, in the sack? Homosexuality is an overblown fetish. You don't see people who like to do it in peanut butter all in ur face do you? Those ppl know how to roll.[/QUOTE] Thanks for beautifully illustrating the ingorance and obsession with homosexuality that embodies so much of the anti-gay crowd. Do you honestly believe that straight soliders don't discuss every creative and imagined sexual act they can think of with eachother? You know what's funny? If you talked openly and often in the army about how you liked to rub peanut butter all over yourself and pay strippers to have their pets lick it off, you would STILL be allowed to serve your country. Do you want to ban all sex talk in the Army? Might be a good idea (see: Abu Gharib), but your point won't be intellectually (there's a word you probably don't get much) consistent until this policy is enforced as applied to all sexual orientations. Seriously, I think people like you are honestly ignorant enought to believe a gay army would go to war dressed as the Village People, holding their weapons limply and calling their fellow soldiers "girlfriend". The reality is that many gays do quietly serve this country, beat up people in barfights and probably call themselves your relatives and (maybe) friends, even if they never tell you, for reasons that are painfully obvious to the rest of us. This policy HURTS our Army. How many Arabic translators has this policy cost us? Good thing we don't need Arabic translators in the Army! It's time our 21st century army adopted some 21st century common sense, and scrapped this discriminatory practice.

My frustration with this article stems from the fact that it doesn�?t address the issue at hand (the allowance or forbiddance of gays in the military) but focuses exclusively on the protest of the military recruiter and the use of �?tactics�?. It has a subtle (or not so subtle, depending on your point of view) assumption of �?this is how our generation/ Penn Law feels about the issue�? without any attempt to acknowledge that there are those in our generation and Penn Law who do not agree (much less persuade these people). This, in my opinion, is one of the most egregious offenses of the Left- the arrogance and presumed moral authority of their positions.

I actually agree that barring gays from the military is bad policy and discrimination. However, if I went into the law school yesterday, I would have taken one of the "Shame on JAG" stickers and crossed at JAG and put "PENN." The "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was devised as a compromise in the Clinton Administration. It is under the executive/legislative branch umbrella. If you want to protest, protest the government on this issue. Nobody, AND I MEAN NOBODY, should be disrespecting the men and women in the armed forces when they are serving and DYING everyday overseas to protect this country. When Penn stops allowing minority-only scholarship donors to use Penn is when the school might have a legitimate say on this issue. Otherwise, they are just hypocrites and DISGRACING our school. I'm all for ending discrimination in the military AND at Penn, but you don't see me protesting the military when they don't have ANYTHING to do with this policy. Use your energy to protest the real culprits and support our troops! And stop wasting the time of the recruiters.

Mara writes, "If a university receives federal funding, the Supreme Court ruled last year, it's required to let the military recruit on its campus." That's actually quite a misrepresentation of the ruling. The ruling was that Congress is permitted to not fund law schools that bar the military from recruiting--not that the law schools are required to let the military recruit on its campus. It comes down to the right of the taxpayers to not fund practices with which they disagree. The military is an overwhelmingly popular institution in America, even with the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy, and since Congress is a democratically elected body, it has the obligation to reflect the will of the people to the greatest extent possible. Mara and others who share her view believe that Congress should be forced to spend taxpayer money to fund law schools that discriminate against an overwhelmingly popular institution. Many others however disagree.

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