Law Student Groups Act On Discrimination Charges

Several student groups at the Law School are currently taking action to make Law School administrators more responsive to student charges of hiring discrimination--an issue raised this year by a black student's discrimination complaint against a law firm recruiter.

Proposal Submitted

A coalition of the Black Law Students Association (BALSA), the Women's Law Association and The Guild will submit a proposal this week to a visiting committee of the Board of Overseers that would make the Law School Placement Committee more responsive to student discrimination charges.

The proposal calls for a placement monitoring committee to "actively encourage" informal discrimination complaints and to warn law firm recruiters about potentially discriminatory or offensive hiring activities.

Also, the national convention of BALSA in Washington D.C. last week passed a resolution sponsored by the Harvard chapter urging BALSA to take action on discrimination charges that the nation's law schools have not scrutinized.

The resolution mandates BALSA's national board to investigate and resolve to its own satisfaction allegations of discrimination and to publish its findings in BALSA's national newsletter.

Call for Boycotts

BALSA should also encourage its members and other students to boycott law firms found to engage in "discriminatory and offensive" hiring practices; the resolution said.

Victor Brudney, professor of Law and chairman of the Placement Committee, said yesterday the committee is now planning procedures it feels are comparable to the student coalition proposals.

Disagreements

"I think the coalition feels we are in less agreement than we do," Brudney said. "We do have some disagreements, but I'd rather not discuss them," he said.

The student actions come partially in response to the case of Gail E. Bowman, a black third-year Law School student, who complained in December that a law firm recruiter, John H. Morrison of the Chicago firm of Kirkland and Ellis, made "racially offensive" remarks to her during a job interview last fall.