Reinstate the Office

WHEN Robert C. Clark was appointed last year as new dean of the Law School, detractors said he was not committed to many of the positive changes in the school brought about by former Dean James Vorenberg '49. Clark already showed the truth of these claims in his decision over the summer to eliminate the school's public-interest counseling office.

The two-person office was an important part of Vorenberg's effort to present the public-interest option to students at a school notorious for supplying the partners of the nation's largest corporate law firms. (Only 6 percent of Harvard Law School students currently go into public-interest law.) Vorenberg also instituted the nation's most generous loan-forgiveness program two years ago, which pays the debts of students with incomes under certain minimal points.

Commendably, Clark has announced that he would double the budget for the loan-forgiveness program. But his decision to eliminate an office that provided not only placement services but also help in career planning is unfortunate and should be remedied immediately.

THE uproar the decision has prompted should indicate the importance of this career office to the school population. More than 900 students, almost 60 percent of the student body, signed a petition last month asking for the restoration of the office. This reaction is all the more impressive when compared with the protests against tenure decisions in recent years, which mobilized only a small minority of the students.

Clark's reaction to the overwhelming student protest has been disappointing. He has asked members of the Career Services office to double as public-interest planning officers, though they are undoubtedly over-worked at this point and have not had comparable experience in counseling students about public-interest opportunities.

In addition, students and the former public-interest staffers point out that the office was the only one at the Law School to provide career counseling as well as placement information. Students interested in public-interest opportunities need more than just application information as they choose to enter a field with substantially lower salaries and fewer well-known opportunities than the corporate route.

Clark has also pledged to form a committee of administrators, professors and students to advise him on the state of public-interest counseling at the school. But the committee has not been given a mandate broader than to provide advice about "placement problems faced by graduates who would like to go into public-interest work." And Clark has yet to announce the members of this committee, more than four weeks after the uproar began.

THE Law School should help students deal with the problems they face as they enter the public-interest field. It should in fact make entering this area of law as easy as possible for its graduates, since they are taking on an much-needed function in a country where public-interest law has been stripped of most of its federal money though its constituency continues to grow.

Clark should immediately appoint the members of his new advisory committee so they can begin to review the situation. He should encourage this committee to seek new ways to help students and recent graduates make the transition to public-interest law.

But most important, Clark should reinstate an office which is clearly needed at the school. Only by making this important step can he appease a student body he has quickly succeeded in alienating.