Those Review advocates who do talk to the press, including a few students and some professors, argue that the journal is as hospitable to women as to men. The journal's environment can be harsh, they say, but the harshness is not gender-oriented.

"I have spent two years at Gannett House and I can state unequivocally that the Law Review is not a sexist institution," says Carol Platt, a third-year student who served as the Review's first female managing editor last year.

She says the accusations of sexism are unwarranted and risk undermining legitimate complaints of sexism and sexual harassment leveled by women in the workplace.

"Sexism and sexual harassment are serious problems and it makes me angry to see the gravity and importance of these issues trivialized," Platt says.

And though professors do not have a hands-on role at the student-run publication, some scholars refute the charges aimed at the Review.

"The people I have spoken with have not given me the impression that there is a problem [of sexism] on the Law Review," says Goldston Professor of Law William D. Andrews.

Detlev F. Vagts '49, who is Bemis Professor of International Law, also says he has never heard that women are marginalized at the Review.

Vagts and Andrews statements are in marked contrast to those of their colleague, Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law Laurence H. Tribe '62, who a month ago equated authors of the Frug parody to Holocaust revisionists.

But Tribe does not blame sexism at the Review on current editors alone; he says the problem is an old one.

"I have felt this for at least a decade," Tribe says. "[The parody] was simply one more straw on an already weakened camel's back."

Others say that sexism within the Review is not particular to the institution, but a reflection of attitudes towards women in the legal profession and in society in general.

"If the Law Review is sexist, the best explanation may be that the legal culture is sexist," says Elizabeth Wolstein, a second-year student who is co-chair of the Review's book review and commentary office.

"People at the Law Review judge each other in large part on how they speak; that the vocabulary of the profession comes more naturally to men is surely a function of something larger than the institutional atmosphere of the Law Review," Wolstein says.

Rhonda Adams, a second-year student and editor, also says that sexism is no more prevalent at the Law Review than in other places.

"I think that if you attack the Law Review you're acting like [sexism] is contained in that one white building," Adams says.