Afterward, he said the law school would make further “explorations” into a response to the military and said that he was in contact with the dean of Yale Law School.
Clark said that whether he would personally sanction a legal challenge by individual students or professors depended on the case’s arguments.
A Full Interview Schedule
The protest came on the same day as on-campus JAG interview sessions by the Navy. Last Friday, for the first time in decades, the Office of Career Services (OCS) arranged Pound Hall recruiting sessions for the Air Force.
At both interview sessions, members of Lambda signed up for individual appointments with JAG recruiters to discuss military discrimination.
Lambda member Lindsay Harrison, a third-year law student, said she believed all of Friday’s appointment slots were filled by protestors. Of the four students who interviewed between 1:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. yesterday, three were protestors. The interviews began at 1 p.m. and were slated to end at 6 p.m.
OCS Director Mark Weber said he could not release the sign-up lists but that he thought they showed a mix of protestors and serious interviewees.
Boonin, the Lambda spokesperson who filled interview slots both Friday and yesterday, said she told the JAG officers that she respected military service but that she felt lying about her sexual orientation would compromise the integrity that is at the core of military service.
One protestor, third-year law student Becky Flynn, said she and her partner, a doctor, would both like to join the military but recruiters said their civil union in Vermont was too open a statement to allow service.
Flynn said she would like to work for a government agency but had been particularly interested in JAG because it emphasizes courtroom experience early on.
Janson Wu ’00, a third-year law student and a resident tutor in Mather House, said the JAG officers told him that most soldiers who were discharged for their sexual orientation had voluntarily come out and that so-called “witch hunts” were rare.
“I don’t know what actually is happening, but if there’s even one investigation of someone, then I think that’s wrong,” Wu said.
The interviewee who said he was not protesting declined to give his name.
Boonin and Flynn were among about a dozen students who stood on the Langdell steps during the rally, sporting signs telling of the financial and moral costs of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
One sign advised Vice President Dick Cheney, whose daughter Mary is openly gay, to “let your daughter serve.”
Aside from Clark, Dershowitz and Halley, other speakers at the rally included Assistant Professor of Law Heather Gerken, who said that arguments for excluding gays from military service were the same as those formerly excluding women and African Americans.
Others, including three former military officers, spoke of ongoing violence against gays in the military.
Lambda president Adam Teicholz, a second-year law student, led a moment of silence to conclude the rally.
—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.