CRR Punishes 15 Students For CFIA Demonstration

The Committee on Rights and Responsibilities yesterday separated one student until September 1971 and required Michael Kazin '70 to withdraw until February 1971 for their part in the April 9 disruption of the Center for International Affairs Visiting Committee.

The rights committee announced disciplinary decisions for only 16 of the 20 students charged. It acquitted one student, admonished three, placed one on warning, and suspended requirements to withdraw for nine others. The four other decisions will be announced today.

The CRR also decided that student demonstrators do not necessarily have to be warned that their actions are illegal in order to be prosecuted for them.

The students have three days in which to appeal the CRR's "findings of fact" and the accompanying punishments. If they do not come forward during the appeal period, or if their appeal is turned down, their punishments will take effect immediately afterward, James Q. Wilson chairman of the CRR, said yesterday.

Broke up Meeting

The disruption occurred when 200 protesters entered the CFIA, forced their way past University officials to a second floor seminar room, and caused the breakup of the Visiting Committee meeting.

Following that disruption, most of the demonstrators moved to Mallinckrodt parking lot and blocked Robert R. Bowie, director of the CFIA, from driving away in his car.

They pursued Bowie to Harvard Square, where they trapped him for 20 minutes inside a taxi cab. Afterward, ten students followed Bowie and Samuel R. Williamson, assistant to the Dean of Harvard College, down Church St., allegedly harassing them.

Charged for Crowd

When Bowie-in consultation with Archibald Cox '34, University spokesman-brought charges against, the 20 students two weeks later, he indicted them for "joining in a noisy and boisterous crowd" with "intent to disrupt the normal conduct of the [Visiting Committee] meeting." He also indicted several of them for the subsequent incidents.

But "most of the evidence [available to those who brought the charges] was photographic, and thus [any] judgment about a given student's participation must depend heavily on where he happened to be when photographed," the rights committee's seven-page announcement stated.

The committee dropped all charges relating to the Mallinckrodt and Harvard Square incidents-except those against Kazin-because the photographs did not show the students in the act of obstruction, the statement added.

The decisions on the disruption in the CFIA itself rested primarily on how close to the seminar room the student was shown to be. "Those near the center of the demonstration could hardly have been unaware of its nature," the CRR statement said.

Prior disciplinary records resulting from past demonstrations were a factor in determining a student's punishment, Wilson added yesterday.

The punishments were ranged as follows:

three admonitions to students "with no prior disciplinary record. [who] were on the edges of the crowd, and did not directly associate themselves with the disruption":

one warning to a student on the edge of the crowed who had a prior admonition on his record:

a suspended requirement to withdraw to one student on the edge of the crowd who had a prior record of warning the later identified himself as Joshua Freeman '70?:

three suspended requirements to withdraw until February 1971, to students with no prior record who "were photographed on the stairs" leading to the seminar room, and who were shown by testimony to be there "for the purpose of joining in the demonstration":

five suspended requirements to withdraw until September 1971, to students "shown to be entering or to have been in the seminar room itself." None had prior records or were proven to have engaged in "additional unacceptable activity while in the room."

Kazin was required to withdraw immediately until at least February 1971. He had a prior record of admonition and probation and "was in the seminar room and there in shouted loudly." He was also punished for subjecting Bowie and Williamson to "intense personal harassment."

Kazin must submit an application for readmission to the committee if he wishes to re-enter the University.

A one-year separation to a student who was in the seminar room, "shouted loudly," grabbed the statement which Bowie read to the demonstrators informing them of a rights violation, tore it up, and spilled a glass of water on a member of the meeting.

A majority of the committee and of the Faculty must approve his readmission.

Many who testified for Bowie acknowledged during the hearings that warnings made by CFIA staff members were inaudible, and some students claimed ignorance of any rights violation.

But to stipulate a warning "would be to license any unacceptable activity that could be carried out by stealth or surprise or in such large or noisy numbers as to make warnings impossible to hear." the rights committee stated.

The CRR also decided that personal views on the nature of the CFIA or the "essential nature," of its Visiting Committee were irrelevant to an individual's guilt in breaking a University regulation.

Pointing out that the CFIA has been approved by the University's governing boards, the committee denied that "those who disapprove of some of the work of the Center have the right to disrupt an official meeting of that Center."