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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 6, 1991                   TAG: 9103060214
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: MARGARET CAMLIN CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LEXINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

W&L DOESN'T BUDGE ON MILITARY BAN

The policy says that employers that discriminate against gays and lesbians are no longer welcome - regardless of whether such discrimination is legal, as is the case with the military.

More than 60 percent of students have signed petitions protesting the faculty action. Two weeks ago, the Student Bar Association passed a resolution asking the professors to rescind their decision.

Bar Association members were bothered that the faculty took the action without consulting students.

"As a group, the SBA has no position on the substance of the policy," President Grant Wood said. "But we felt like it was an issue students ought to know about before it was discussed, because it affects us."

Monday, the faculty met to reconsider its stand, but decided not to change the new policy.

The American Association of Law Schools is requiring its member schools to amend their anti-discrimination policies to include homosexuals as a protected group. The change is required for accreditation.

At least 75 percent of all law schools in the United States have complied, according to W&L Law School Dean Randall Bezanson.

"It was not an easy decision," Bezanson said. "It is clear in everyone's mind that it is a decision that the faculty had to make. It made it after a most thorough review."

Bezanson said the military and other affected employers still can post notices on campus bulletin boards and leave information. But they no longer can conduct interviews on campus.

The University of Virginia's law school also recently changed the wording in its anti-discrimination policy to include homosexuals. But about two weeks ago, UVa President John Casteen ordered the law school to rescind the ban.

"I am not persuaded that an accrediting body . . . can legitimately determine who interviews on the grounds," Casteen said in a statement Feb. 12.

Mitch Neurock, a law student who is a second lieutenant in the Air Force, wrote an editorial in the W&L Law News that first alerted students to the policy change.

"It escapes me how the faculty, in a time of sharply declining legal employment, can take it upon itself to ban employers from campus," Neurock wrote.

"We need employment contacts now more than ever, but the faculty, with their jobs secured by tenure, have presumed to decide that some employers are not good enough for us. What a pointy-headed, thoughtless thing to do."

Neurock has decided to form the Military Law Society, which will schedule interviews and maintain contact with the military, FBI and CIA.

Paul Driscoll, a student who served three years in the Air Force, said he thinks it is improper for a university to exclude any employer whose polices have been upheld in the courts.

First-year student Anthony Kostelecky agreed. "I think the school should follow an anti-discrimination policy, but one that's based on law," he said.

"Faculties are usually left of center," which in itself is not usually a problem, he said. "But when they start imposing social policies on us, that's bad."

Otto Konrad is one of many students who support the faculty's decision, while regretting that students were not involved.

He believes prejudice against homosexuals has played a part in the push to reverse the decision. "I think homophobia shows itself [on campus] in that people discount the severity of what employers are doing when they discriminate against gays," Konrad said.

Allan Ides, professor of constitutional law, proposed a compromise at Monday's faculty meeting, but it was defeated 11-9.

The compromise would have required that the policy be interpreted to mean "unlawful" discrimination only. This would, in effect, allow the military to continue recruiting on campus, because its ban on gays was upheld last year by the U.S. Supreme Court last year.

Homosexuals are not protected against discrimination by state and federal laws, as are blacks, women and religious minorities.

Driscoll and Kostelecky said they and other students plan to lobby alumni to pressure the university administration to overturn the faculty's decision. "The battle's not over yet," Driscoll said.