Contempt Cheyney's Trial

THOSE who went to Cambridge District Court last Friday to see a former Harvard student on his way to a state penitentiary for the offense of appearing on campus last Spring left the trial with more than a sour taste in their mouths. The horrifying experience of being beaten, kicked and truncheoned out of the courtroom building by a cadre of plain-clothesmen and uniformed police exceeded any verbal demonstration of how far the City of Cambridge or the Harvard Administration is prepared to go in the defense of archaic, ill-defined laws.

Cheyney C. Ryan, a former co-chairman of Harvard SDS, was found guilty on two counts of "criminal trespass"-and punished for each with a one-month prison term and a $100 fine. But the significance of the conviction far outweighs the punishment imposed on Ryan and whatever legal injustices which that punishment may have involved. Its greater importance lies in the effect it will have on those who find it necessary and justified to challenge Harvard's political commitments in a manner that exceeds the limits of "acceptable" dissent.

Ryan and 15 other students were suspended from Harvard last December after they and about 50 other SDS demonstrators had forcibly held Dean May in his office to demand that the University immediately promote all "painters' helpers" to full painter status. At the time of the suspensions, the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities attached another sanction to the punishment: the students could not appear anywhere on campus during their terms of absence without receiving permission beforehand, or they would face legal prosecution. CRR members argued that this additional rule-a long-standing statute for all students required to leave Harvard-was merely a logical extension of the original punishment; if the students were truly to be excluded from the University, then they must suffer the complete consequences of that decision. But others in the University-even many of those who approved of the suspensions-argued that the "no entrance" rule was an uncalled-for infringement on the rights of the suspended students as well as the rights of others at Harvard who might want to associate with them. The other terms of the punishment, they said, were punishment enough.

In the case of the 16 students, the rule lay dormant until mid-July, when Harvard, in the person of Archibald Cox, swore out complaints against four of them, including Ryan, for trespass at Harvard during the national student strike last May. At the time, many SDS members contended that the Harvard Administration had deliberately waited until the student body had departed from Cambridge before filing legal charges. Cox responded, then and again last week in court, that there was no premeditated delay; the deans and the CRR had spent much of May and June prosecuting dozens of students for the obstructive picket lines of May 8 and May 11 and for several other disturbances, and there was simply no time to put together a case against the suspended students that would stand up in court.

BUT if the University had ever succeeded in finding the evidence necessary to convict Ryan, they certainly weren't showing it last week. Setting aside the accusation that Ryan was present at the May 11 demonstration, which he acknowledged in court, Harvard produced no conclusive proof that Ryan was also trespassing at Harvard on May 8. The sole evidence was the testimony of David A. Harnett, director of the Office of Advanced Standing, who said that he saw Ryan at University Hall on the morning of May 8, talking with a group of students. Harnett was so uninformed about the events of that day that he declined to say whether there was a demonstration and whether Ryan, as accused, was part of it.

To anyone who was at University Hall that morning, Harnett's testimony must seem nothing short of ludicrous. A picket line of at least 300 students blocked off that building in one of the loudest and most spirited protests Harvard has ever seen. As Rebecca Scott '71, a member of the Strike Steering Committee, testified at the trial, "It was clear that what was happening at University Hall was not just a bunch of people milling around, but an organized demonstration." And in addition to her testimony, two members of SDS testified that Ryan could not have been at the protest that morning because he was attending a meeting of the group in Boston at the time.

In announcing that Ryan was guilty of being at Harvard on May 8, Judge Viola conveniently did away with the testimony of Ryan's witnesses. But there was another subject of testimony-none of it directly related to the question of whether Ryan was actually present at Harvard-that proved very damaging to the University. That was Ryan's claim that Harvard enforces or ignores the "trespass" rule as it wishes. To document his claim, Ryan questioned Harnett about a lengthy discussion the two had had in Leverett House during the period of the strike. When asked by Ryan why he failed to report his presence on campus at that time, Harnett responded that their talk was "an entirely personal thing that I didn't see the need to call anyone's attention to."

THE POINT, of course, is that Harvard does not prosecute an ex-student who comes to campus to engage in personal discussions; the University's attitude changes, however, when the individual in question is present to encourage political activity that is detrimental to Harvard's position. The demands of the May 8 and 11 demonstrations were that the University grant full pay to all employees who wished to strike against the war, and that it also eliminate all on-campus defense and counter-insurgency research. Ryan attempted to show that the political outlook of the protest-rather than his personal presence-was what the University had found so objectionable, and he put several students on the stand in order to drive home the point. Viola overruled all such testimony.

Dean May contested Ryan's claim that the decision to prosecute him was made on political grounds. He acknowledged that Harvard does not invariably prosecute all ex-students who appear on campus, but he added that anyone who trespassed to appear in an obstructive demonstration should be approached "through the intermediary of a court." But even at that, the University's case with respect to Ryan's alleged appearance at the May 8 picket line was at best incompetent and at worst dishonest. Harnett, the University's sole witness, could not even say that Ryan was in fact demonstrating. And given Harnett's ambivalence about what Ryan was doing at Harvard, one is tempted to conclude that the University had equally ambivalent motives in pressing the charge.

One additional factor-mentioned only incidentally during the trial-tended to indicate yet another irregularity in the conduct of the prosecution. More than two months elapsed between the issuing of the four warrants and Ryan's arrest. Particularly suspect were the varying statements of Fidele Centrella, the Cambridge detective in charge of the case, as to when the warrants reached police hands. Early last month (CRIMSON, Oct. 6), he said that he had the warrants shortly after they were issued, and that he had spent the entire two-month period looking for Ryan and the three other indicted ex-students (none of whom have yet been picked up). In court, however, he testified that he did not see the warrants until early September.

Even if his second explanation is the truthful one, it would still leave unexplained a three-week period during which Cambridge police were searching out Ryan and the others. But the fact that all four list addresses and telephone numbers in Cambridge or Boston and have made no effort to duck police since July places in doubt the official explanation that there has been no deliberate delay in pursuing the arrests. And the fact that police seized Ryan not at home but at an SDS office in Boston-other SDS members as well as Ryan himself claim that he had not been there at all during the preceding month-suggests that the authorities were aware of Ryan's whereabouts and activities.

Have police arrested only Ryan thus far because it would be politically expedient to pack the four ex-students off to jail, not in a group, but one by one? Was the time (the beginning of the Fall term) and place of Ryan's arrest calculated to intimidate the Harvard student body in general and the SDS office staff in particular? No one can say for sure. "You think we're going to tell you or anyone else what we're doing?" Centrella said as he declined to comment on the particulars of the case. And so the tactics and purposes of the Cambridge police remain a mystery.

On these bases, Ryan-who conducted his own defense-sought to argue his case within the framework of Harvard's social and political commitments, instead of adhering to the narrower criteria on which Harvard and Viola were determined to judge him. He did not attempt to exonerate himself in any strictly legal sense; he freely acknowledged that he was demonstrating on May 11, and his argument concerning the May 8 picket line was intended to demonstrate Harvard's motives in prosecuting him as well as his own innocence. And as long as he refused to speak in Viola's legal jargon, the clash between the judge and the defense was inevitable.

As the trial began, a Harvard graduate student rose to read a petition which Ryan had circulated around Harvard to gain support for his position. Viola ordered him removed from the courtroom. Midway through the trial, he also ejected a group of five or six people for heckling him. As Viola began constantly overruling Ryan's arguments, the spectators hissed and booed him, and he repeatedly threatened to clear the courtroom. Finally, the judge placed a policeman in the rear of the court with orders to arrest anyone who made a sound during the trial.

Suddenly, during Ryan's summation, police arrested John Pennington '68-4, National Secretary of SDS, and charged him with contempt of court. Then, after cutting Ryan off for the last time, Viola ordered the courtroom cleared. As one or two plainclothesmen ushered the coterie of Harvard officials into a safe corner, Ryan's witnesses and 75 spectators were forcefully driven out and away from the courtroom building. During the mel?c, police seized three other spectators on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to assault and battery on a policeman. All four arrested now face prison terms.

The conviction and sentencing of Cheyney Ryan is not particularly shocking in the context of other recent court decisions in connection with Harvard: two ex-students slapped with nine-month prison terms which they are presently serving for assault and battery on Dean Watson during the April 1969 seizure of University Hall; a third ex-student given a four-month sentence for the same offense; and six more students receiving one to three year probationary terms for "disturbing the peace" by posting anti-war notices around Harvard last Fall. But what the trial of Cheyney Ryan has renewed with telling force is the notion that it is difficult for an opponent of Harvard University to get a fair trial in a Cambridge court.