Law School Sets Drive To Enroll More Girls

Harvard Law School has begun a program for the recruitment of new women students, similar to the current program to encourage black applicants.

Derek C. Bok, dean of the Law School, has granted $700 to defray the expenses of women law students who will travel in the first and second weeks of March to Boston-area and out-of-state colleges to discover and speak to potential candidates. Because of budget limitations, the recruitment effort will be concentrated on colleges in the Boston and New York areas, but an effort will be-made to stretch funds, so that several southern colleges can also be included in the drive.

Since it is too late for any women who have not yet taken the Law School Aptitude Test to apply, the recruitment program will be aimed at two groups of women: those who took the test, but have not yet considered applying to Harvard, and those who have taken more than one set of graduate school exams, but have not seriously thought about attending law school.

More Encouragement

"The Harvard Law School has absolutely ignored women in the past. We want to reach the girls who need just a little more encouragement, to show them that women have a place in the Law School," said Anne R. Thornton '69, president of the Harvard Women's Law Student Association. At present, eight per cent of Harvard's law students are women.

The Harvard women's law group originally submitted a budget proposal of $1800 for the program. However, since the Admissions Office is already 30 per cent over its recruitment allowance, only $700 was set aside for female recruitment, Mrs. Thornton said.

"We were amazed that in a deficit year, which has seen a rise in tuition, they could find any money at all. However, the grant has come very late in the year, and a dollar spent now is not as effective asit would have been in the fall," she said.

Dean Bok said that the Law School admits women on an equal basis with men. The small proportion of female law students, he explained, reflects only the correspondingly smaller number of applicants.

"We hope that more women will become interested in attending the Law School when women law students explain the program to them," Bok said.