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Law School Rally, Sit-In Bring About Open Forum

Students and faculty at the Law School will meet this afternoon in an ellort to resolve a conflict over a new grading policy which sparked two days of student demonstrations last week.

Law School Dean James Vorenberg `49 scheduled a 3 p.m. open meeting of the faculty-student committee which submitted resolutions at Wednesday's faculty meeting to allow professors to adjust grades on the basis of class participation.

Approximately 500 law students rallied and marched on the dean's office both Thursday and Friday and staged a four hour sit in Friday afternoon to protest the faculty's decision to accept the resolution.

No Input

Charging that the faculty had not accepted student input before passing the resolutions Wednesday, the demonstrators demanded that the dean call an open faculty meeting for them to voice objections. Only 10 students are allowed to sit in on Law School faculty meetings, the next of which is scheduled for May 18, the end of exam period.

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Vorenberg refused and instead scheduled today's open meeting of the Legal Education Committee.

"I think an open meeting of the committee is not going to be very effective said Helen D Irvin, a student representative on the Legal Education Committee at Friday's demonstration Past open meetings she added "seemed to have no effect at all on faculty actions."

We'll Be There

But protesters said this weekend that they plan to attend the open meeting masse.

"To expect some quick-fix action is unreasonable," Vorenberg told the students crowded outside his office Friday. I don't think the faculty could have a discussion," he added, "under a situation with three or four hundred students sitting around the room.

Day 2

The students had marched to Votenberg's office after a 10 a.m. rally Friday where they listened to a series of speakers on both side of the issue.

Associate Dean Lance M. Liebman defended the faculty's decision, telling the crowd that the Michelman committee, which recommended a series of changes in Law School teaching last spring, had consulted a number of students during its two year review of education at the Law School.

Among its recommendation, the committee had concluded that "one of the things wrong with legal education at this school was the one big exam at the end of the year," Liebman said.

He acknowledged that "the Michelman Committee seems like ancient history to present students" and that students "have already registered for next year's classes without knowledge of the new rules, and he said the faculty would reconsider the issue May 18.

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