Law Faculty Reaches No Decision After Deliberating for Nine Hours

The Law School Faculty met for nine and a half hours before adjourning at 12:35 a. m. this morning without reaching a decision on any one of the five discipline cases it considered.

In what one faculty member called "venbal genocide," the faculty reviewed exhaustively the details of the Administrative Board's one term suspension of Gregory K. Pilkington, a second-year law student.

The faculty will reconvene the meeting at 2 p. m. today to continue its discussion. Yesterday's meeting was one of the longest in Law School history.

Although the faculty reportedly came close to ratifying the Ad Board's punishment at one point, it decided not to take a final vote after a series of speeches opposing the decision.

Pilkington was one of five black law students disciplined for their involvement in the OBU building takeovers last semester. He received the most severe punishment of the five students because he participated in the Nov. 19 SDS sit-in at University Hall as well as the two OBU occupations.

Marathon Meeting

Student representatives and faculty members emerged from the marathon meeting periodically to give brief summaries of the discussion.

The faculty reportedly reviewed in meticulous detail every facet of Pilkington's case, from the Ad Board's procedures and evidence to the possible effects of the suspension on Pilkington's career.

Voted Down

In the afternoon session, the faculty voted down a resolution that would have sent the case back to the Ad Board on the grounds that the hearings were not open.

The Board offered to allow each defendant to bring ten observers to his hearing, but when the students announced they were boycotting the hearings, the Board closed them.

Pilkington asked the Board to hold the hearings in a room which could accommodate a few hundred people, but the Board refused.

Major Cause

Pilkington's suspension was the major cause for last week's disruption and protests by a group of radical law students. The students demanded that the faculty hold an open meeting before continuing its discussion of the cases.

About 800 students and faculty members attended a mass meeting on the punishments Friday and another 300 met in six different groups Monday night.