Law School Takes 21 Girls, Went Co-educational Calmly

Twenty-one more women will enter Law School this fall following the first admission of ladies last year. One of the last law schools to admit women, Harvard announced its decision to go co-ed on a limited basis in October, 1949. Women have made a place for themselves at the bar, Dean Erwin N. Griswold said at the time.

In the first year of the new deal for women, the Portias compiled an average record. None made an A but thereafter there was a reasonable cross-section, including a flunk.

Most of the women entering this fall are from the East.

When the Law School finally decided to admit women in 1949, the anti-feminists who opposed the move warned darkly, "Just wait and see." The implication was that women would be a disrupting influence and that the Law School would suffer.

Today, with the first year behind them, the women "pioneers" seem to have refuted the gloomy forecasts. Most objective observers agree that the Harvard Law School has gone quietly co-ed--and likes it.

"The men students don't dress any better or act any differently; they still put their feet on the desks, and I still tell the same jokes, in spite of the girls," is the way Warren A. Seavey '02, Bussy Professor of Law, sums up the situation.