Riot Policy: II

Many of those whose fate rests with the third district court judge are preparing their cases with an eye on the Administrative Board, pruning their statements of anything that might prejudice the College against them. Their efforts, however, are futile, for if the riot act promulgated by Dean Bender this fall is applied, their mere presence will be enough to blight their college careers.

Once the trial is over, then, the crucial question will not be their part in Thursday's proceedings, but simply whether the Administrative Board considers the Pogo rally a genuine riot or not. The logic of the University's Mere Presence rule is that no riot would occur unless the students were there to make mischief.

This assumes that those present were there expecting a riot, which was not the case last Thursday. The occasion then was an authorized demonstration in honor of a cartoonist, and the majority of the demonstrators had no interest in pulling trolley wires or over-turning automobiles. The rally became something of a riot only when the police arrived in force, and it is difficult to expect everyone present to scamper off quickly before the object of their interest had arrived. In this particular case, there was obviously no riot in the usual sense of that word, and the Mere Presence rule should not apply.

Beyond this problem of discipline, the Administrative Board has a longer range question to solve. When the paddy wagons deposited their twenty-eight occupants at Central Square headquarters, the men under arrest were greeted by a University official who was busily doling out funds from the Deans Office bail-posting fund. Yet the next day, when they gathered in the courtroom, most of them faced for the first time with something more serious than a parking ticket, the University official was nowhere in sight. It seemed that the people who were in charge of University Hall were wavering between outright intervention and the traditional hands-off policy.

There is a good case for intervention: most of those under arrest had no idea of what they should plead, where to find legal counsel, or what the chances were of escaping sentence. Like sheep they followed the example of those lucky enough to have a lawyer. This worked last Friday, but it will take more than follow-the-leader tactics to wage a court trial.

Persuasive as this is, it is still no excuse for University interference, since the cases are strictly the students' business. The University is under no more obligation to help them than it is to help some undergraduate group escape financial difficulties. Yet there is one vital service which the Dean's Office could perform with-out abandoning its traditional and proper aloofness. It should prepare a list of lawyers who would be willing to defend students booked on charges of disturbing the peace, much like the list of doctors the Hygiene Department keeps handy. Next time the paddy wagons come rolling into Central Square Square packed with Harvard undergraduates, there should not only be a bail-poster, but a list of lawyers as well.