Dean of the Law School Robert C. Clark attempted yesterday to ease the rapidly escalating tensions between his administration and law students who are angry about the school's record on hiring minority and women faculty.

At an open forum in Austin Hall, Clark told a crowd of more than 250 that the faculty's decision to offer tenure to four white male professors Friday did not violate Law School policy on offers to visiting scholars.

The meeting, which lasted more than an hour and a half, followed an unexpected eat-in earlier in the day at the Law School's faculty dining club.

Thirty students descended upon the dining hall at about 1 p.m. and engaged the seven professors there in a heated dialogue about the school's hiring criteria.

The day's events came on the heels of Weld Professor of Law Derrick Bell's announcement Wednesday that he would continue his unpaid leave of absence in protest of the faculty's lack of diversity.

Bell, who is the school's first Black tenured professor, also filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, charging the Law School with discriminatory hiring practices.

Of the 64 tenured or tenuretracked scholars at the Law School, five are white women and six are Black men.

Students said they staged the protest at the dining club to focus faculty attention on what they considered a stark contrast in student and faculty perspectives.

"They've in the past closed this door and locked it in our faces when we've tried to come in," said third-year law student Julia R. Gordon '85.

"The students feel unbelievably betrayed" by the faculty's recent hiring decisions, she said.

The students caught the law professors completely by surprise, but some of the scholars--including Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence Charles Fried and former Dean of the Law School James Vorenburg '49--debated with the students over lunch.

During the open meeting later in the day, Clark said a school policy barring visiting professors from tenure consideration while still teaching at the Law School had been suspended last spring.

The dean said the policy "had been applied evenhandedly" to all prospective candidates for tenure.

But students argued that the school used the policy to deny posts to three women and minority professors in the past two years and waived it recently for the three white male professors.

Clark acknowledged that the administration had done a poor job in communicating with students. "We should have realized that the change in question was of great interest to groups of students," he said.