Back to the Drawing Board

It took the members of the Harvard Law Review more than four hours this week to agree on an affirmative action plan to replace the scheme it adopted two weeks ago, and members hope the new version will encounter less opposition than the original procedure.

The quota system the Review adopted two weeks ago in an attempt to insure increased representation of minorities and women met with stiff opposition from some Review editors.

Some editors said the original plan abandoned the principle of selecting members for the prestigious law journal on the basis of merit. The Review reconsidered its affirmative action position on Wednesday afternoon.

The newly adopted affirmative action plan stipulates that after 16 students are accepted on the basis of first-year grades and 16 on the basis of the writing competition, a new admissions comittee will accept another eight students, taking into account their grades, writing competition performance, and an optional statement outlining special circumstances, such as an applicant's race and gender.

If minorities and women are "sufficiently represented" after selections based on grades and writing are completed, then the admissions committee will not consider race or sex in its selection, Stuart Singer, president of the Review, said after the meeting.

The new procedure has the support of more Review members than the original affirmative action plan--although more than one-third of the members still oppose the plan--and it will probably gain more support from the faculty, which must agree to provide the Review with grades.