HLS Should Lift Military Recruitment Ban

To the editors:

The staff editorial decrying the unjustness of the Solomon Amendment (Feb. 24), which prevents Harvard Law School (HLS) from receiving almost $1 million in federal funding because it prevents the military from recruitment at its Office of Career Services (OCS), misses one crucial point: the military is not an "organization," like a law or consulting firm. It is a necessary piece of our country's survival, and its primary concern is effectiveness, not equality.

To be effective, the military must first have men to serve in it. If we choose not to consider military service as a requirement of citizenship--like jury duty--as some countries do, then recruiting is the only way that the government can fill the ranks to keep this country safe. If this process is jeopardized, the government has every right to impose whatever sanctions, even monetary ones, it feels necessary to restore the stability of this process.

HLS should be thanking our country for taking an all-volunteer status, which prevents those at HLS from ever having to deal with the military at all. Why should HLS be preventing a process which is the only possible way to keep it removed from the horrors of combat?

In addition, the fact that the military is not a normal organization is shown by the fact that normal equal opportunity laws do not apply to it. People who are not of adequate age, height, weight or strength to perform the highly physical duties required of soldiers are automatically disqualified from military service in a way that would be patently illegal in the civilian world.

The entire hierarchical structure of the military is based on the antithesis of equality. Decisions about who can serve and who cannot are made solely on the basis of military effectiveness, not equality.

Those in power know this, and their decision regarding homosexuals has been made in this way. And since the question is one of effectiveness, only those familiar with the military have the right to even participate in the discussion. Those at HLS are making a statement on a discussion that they have no right to participate in. They simply cannot know what they are talking about.

HLS needs to butt out. Its statement shows its disrespect for a military that has kept it not only safe but detached from its dangerous work, and in addition, shows its utter lack of understanding of the issues that are involved in the consideration of homosexuals in the military. When it lift its ban, then they will be making a statement that is worthy to be attached to their name. E. DAVIS WALKER '00   Feb. 25, 1998.