??? Bok Refuses Spring Class ??? On 'Women and the Laws'

Derek C. Bok, dean of the Law School, refused yesterday to authorize a course next semester on "Women and the Laws."

Last Tuesday 20 out of the 40 first-year women students marched to Bok's office to request a special class section next semester on laws concerning women ??n such areas a property rights, contracts, contraception and abortion.

Although he decided yesterday not to grant the course for next Spring, Bok promised " to do everything possible to provide the course next year for second- or third-year students."

He said last night that it "would be better to wait a decent interval of time to get a well-prepared course,"

Bok added that there were many administrative problems in creating "a course with decent academic standards at that rate of speed."

"There is a lack of faculty members who are available and prepared to teach such a course." Bok said, "as well as substantial problems of rearrangements and re-registration if a new course were added to be at the last moment."

Robert Braucher, professor of Law said that "Women and the Laws" would be a "perfectly good course for first year students" but that there might be serious problems in scheduling a class with high professional standards on a "crash basis."

He added that the Law School had previously prepared a course on this subject but that the woman law professor who was to teach the course had gone to Yale Law School instead.

Braucher had originally agreed to supervise the course but was forced towithdraw when he was nominated Wednesday as associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court.

Roz Lazarus and Alice Ballard, organizers of the group, persuaded Leonard Boudin, visiting professor of Law, to take Braucher's place as sponsor and also offered to take care of the administrative problems of creating the course.

They said Bok was "paternal" at the hour-and-a-half meeting. "He implied that the loss of time and energy expended in teaching the course would mean a loss to other students which would not outweigh the gain," Lazarus said after the meeting.

Lazarus and Ballard said that some students plan to protest the decision by boycotting their seminars next semester and others hope to take the course as an extra-curricular activity.