http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/ny...84d&ei=5087%0A Quote:
For five years, Yale Law School has fought to restrict military recruiters from its job fairs because of the Pentagon’s policy that bars openly gay or bisexual people from the military. But with the federal government threatening to withhold $350 million in grants if the university does not assist the recruiters, that fight will all but end on Monday.
After an appeals court ruled in favor of the Defense Department on Sept. 17, the law school said it would allow recruiters from the Air Force and Navy to participate in a university-sponsored job interview program for law students on Monday afternoon. For now, the legal battle to stop the recruiters is over, said Robert A. Burt, a Yale law professor and the lead plaintiff in the case.
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Quote:
At question is a statute called the Solomon Amendment, which allows the federal government to withhold funds from universities that do not extend the same welcome to military recruiters as they do to other recruiters.
Since 1978, Yale Law School has required recruiters to sign a pledge of nondiscrimination. Military recruiters would not do that because of the Defense Department’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which permits homosexuals to serve in the armed forces as long as they keep their sexual orientation private.
But in 2002, the federal government threatened to withhold the millions it grants to Yale every year, mostly for medical and scientific research, if the law school did not accommodate the recruiters. The law school complied, but 45 members of its faculty filed suit, challenging the law as an infringement on free speech and association as well as academic freedoms. (Yale College has not restricted the activities of military recruiters.)
A district court agreed in 2005, and the law school again ceased to assist military recruiters. But in a broader case, the United States Supreme Court last year unanimously sided against a consortium of about three dozen law schools and universities seeking to bar recruiters from their campuses. |
Quote:
Still, that did not lessen the ruling’s sting for gay rights advocates like Sara Jeruss, a third-year law student and the co-chairwoman of OutLaws, an organization of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students at the law school.
“We’re disappointed by it,” Ms. Jeruss said recently in an interview. “We obviously wish the government wasn’t forcing discrimination on us.”
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Oh, you poor baby. You have to suffer the indignity of knowing that at some point during your three years, someone will set foot on the campus who is forced by Congress to adhere to a policy they probably don't even agree with.
These kids need to get over themselves. Nobody is forcing them to interview with the military recruiters, nobody is even forcing them to talk to them. The way OCI works, it's very likely that no student will even SEE the recruiters unless they actively seek them out.
But of course, as they have in the past few years, contingents of hippie law students from all over will march in protest, scream at the recruiters, and try to block them from physically entering the campus.
Here's an idea - if you have a problem with a policy that the military has, rather than freaking out on the recruiters who are simply trying to talk to students interested in serving, why don't you yell at the (Democratic) Congress who has the power to change this?