[Note from Evan: This is Jenny Blair, and she’s going to be pitching in a bit with the writing around here. Welcome her!]
One of only two law schools in the nation to have denied military recruiters access to its campus during the “don’t ask, don’t tell” era recently announced it will lift its ban once DADT is repealed in September.
Unlike the overwhelming majority of American law schools, the Vermont Law School has kept recruiters off its campus because the military’s barring of openly non-heterosexual people violated a non-discrimination policy that the school adopted in 1985. That lack of hypocrisy cost VLS dearly–to the tune of some $500,000 a year in federal funds since 2000–when the Defense Department decided to withhold federal funding from all universities of which any part prohibited military recruiters. [The Defense Department can do that because of the Solomon Amendment, which prevents schools from receiving federal funding if they don’t allow military recruiters on campus.]
In other words, the students, faculty, and trustees of Vermont Law School said no thanks to over $5 million in order to uphold the school’s own stated principles. Who says lawyers’ loyalties are for sale? Bravo, VLS.
