Law Faculty Committee to Consider Abolition of All Saturday Classes

The Law School Faculty yesterday established a committee which may recommend eliminating Saturday law classes.

The Faculty also declared the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving as holidays beginning in the 1968-69 academic year.

The committee was first designated to study the effects of adding these two holidays to the schedule. The Faculty then asked it to consider the overall problem of Saturday classes.

Acting Dean A. James Casner said after the meeting that he had not yet appointed a committee and might use an existing group, probably the Committee on Legal Education, instead.

Casner said yesterday that lengthening the class day during the week might be one alternative to Saturday sessions. "But we don't have enough hours in the day even now," he said.

The Faculty did not declare the post-Thanksgiving holiday for this year primarily because of the difficulty of rescheduling classes after the year's program is planned, Casner said. He added that the holidays declared for the Sesquicentennal celebration earlier this Fall have already caused a tight schedule.

Student Petition

A student petition circulated last week calling for a three-day Thanksgiving holiday "brought the issue up now," Casner said. He mentioned that the Faculty was "much impressed by the substantial student feeling" on the issue.

About one-fifth of the Law School, 325 students, signed the Phillips Brooks Committee petition. The signers said they were willing to reschedule the classes in question if the Faculty felt that "the two less days of classes . . . have a measurable impact on the quality of lawyers produced by the Harvard Law School."