University of Texas School of Law - Peregrinus Yearbook (Austin, TX)

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ABOVE LEFT: Dean Smith addresses convocation sponsored by SBA to elicit law school reaction to the Rogers' appointment. ABOVE: Jim Coronado confers with SBA President Darwin McKee during September 27 convocation. LEFT: Regents meet with James Kin-neavy. chairman of Faculty-Student Advisory Committee, and law professor Charles Alan Wright, to discuss the appointment before a law school audience. LEFT TO RIGHT: Regents Thomas Law. Ed Clark and Allan Shivers. SBA President McKee. 11

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Lorene Rogers’ Appointment On September 12, the Board of Regents took action which normally would have been regarded as a landmark event in educational history, by appointing Lorene Rogers as the first woman president of a major state university. Instead of applause, however, the appointment sparked a chorus of protest from every segment of the University. The Regents’ vote (5 to 3, with James Bauerle. Lady Bird Johnson and Thomas Law dissenting) culminated what many viewed as a series of arrogant and myopic Board decisions. The most recent previous wave of controversy had arisen when Chancellor Charles LeMaistre abruptly fired President Stephen Spurr in the fall of 1974. In the wake of Spurr's dismissal. Rogers was named president ad interim, and a Faculty-Student Advisory Committee was formed to recommend presidential candidates to the Board of Regents. Final authority to make a selection lay with the Regents, but it was widely assumed that they would draw a successor from the Committee's list. The Faculty voted to accept only nominees from the list. The overt reaction of law students to the appointment was relatively mild, but private dissatisfaction was widespread. The unanimous call by the SBA Board of Governors for a class boycott was largely ignored. But 200 law students marched to the Governor’s Mansion to call for Roger’s resignation, and an SBA poll showed overwhelming disapproval of the selection. Even the Women's Law Caucus deplored the process by which a woman had finally become president of the University. Regents Allan Shivers. Ed Clark and Thomas Law joined Advisory Committee members James Kinneavy and Charles Alan Wright in a panel discussion which packed the Law School Auditorium. Professor Wright stated that attributing the turmoil to faculty-student dissidents was akin to claiming that the Washington Post caused Watergate. By December, Rogers was firmly entrenched, but law students and others began formulating means to combat what Professor Albert Alschuler (in resigning from the faculty) called the contempt” in which the faculty and students are held by the Regents. TCXAS Ufci TOU8 TMi n»U MNT TO UM A'CK? UfOKtflA KU - ■' mm cuu» VX Toxm Law Forum ABOVE: Law students march to Governor's Mansion to read an SBA statement calling for Rogers' resignation. RIGHT: Students (some wearing black arm bands in protest) gather with professors to discuss alternatives to a strike. 10

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12 U.S. District Court Judge Charles B. Wyzanski U.S. District Court Judge Marvin E. Frankel .•V .'