COLUMN: The Law School's Solomonic deal

The "equal opportunity statement" is the coat of arms of the large modern organization. In just one paragraph, a company, school or charity can proclaim its progressive lineage and help shield itself from civil rights lawsuits and perceived reactionary behavior. But Penn does countenance the discriminatory policies of at least one recruiter, providing office space for recruiters from the U.S. Army. On February 28 in this space, I wrote about a lawsuit filed by Vermont Law School students against the U.S. government. The students were suing to overturn the Solomon Amendment, a federal law denying some federal financial aid to students at law schools which forbid the Army from recruiting Judge Advocate Generals. Like Penn Law, Vermont Law is opposed to the military's "don't ask-don't tell" policy prohibiting open homosexuals from serving in the ranks. But also, like most law schools, Vermont Law is not willing to bear the steep price of prohibiting JAG recruiters outright. Hence the lawsuit. In late 1997, Penn Law faced a similar dilemma. Rather than lose financial aid, the Law School capitulated and allowed Army recruiters on campus. In response, many law students launched protests, which received extensive coverage in this newspaper. Law School administrators and faculty promised to review the policy in a year's time. But when the recruitment issue came up again last year, there were no protests and no stories in the Daily Pennsylvanian. Instead, the Law School quietly reached a compromise with the recruiters, asking them to interview law students in the University's Career Services office -- located in the McNeil Building -- rather than its own, located on the Law School campus. The Army accepted and did not press the financial aid issue. For their part, law students active in the movement against Army recruiters see the settlement as better than nothing. "I think the new plan is, true to the law's name, a Solomonic compromise," said third-year law student Jordana Horn, who helped lead the 1997 protest. "The Law School gets to cosmetically maintain the integrity of its anti-discrimination policy but the Solomon Amendment's injustice remains intact." The Army JAG corps also sees the compromise as less than ideal. "Of course we'd prefer to recruit on the Law School campus," said Cpt. Merrilee Durrwachter, who performed JAG interviews in McNeil last fall. "I only interviewed two people last fall, [both in] October," she said. "So that's not a high number of interviews, compared to most schools?. I know [the number of interviews] was higher the year before last year, [when] we used to interview in the Law School library." "We try to accommodate a school's request," she added. "We don't want to force ourselves onto schools' campuses. If the Career Services office won't allow us in, they won't allow us in." But even if both students and recruiters profess satisfaction with the compromise, the Law School's hot-potato strategy toward Army recruiting begs the question: Why have an anti-discrimination policy if it is only going to be honored in the breach? The Army does not legally discriminate. Legally is the operative word. It is also a word that is not found in either the Law School's or Penn's non-discrimination statement. But Penn does accommodate the Army; shouldn't it change its statement to read "legally discriminate?" As it stands, Penn's coat of arms is just so much gloss.

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