Don't Vote for Any

Like a bad penny or a case of malaria, the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities keeps coming back. For the past two years, the overwhelming majority of the students of Harvard and Radcliffe have tried every method from voting to massive disruptive demonstrations to make it clear to the Faculty and the Administration that they want no part of the CRR or the Resolution which spawned it. And for two years, the Faculty and Administration have ignored these indications and clung to the hope that, if only the correct technical formula can be found, the student body can be induced to swallow the CRR.

The referendum in progress in another attempt--by an Administration-supported group of students--to make the CRR work. At first glance, it seems to promise great concessions. But in fact, it is simply another attempt to provide the CRR with a rationale for repression.

Students voted twice last year on the question of student representation on the CRR. In the Fall, randomly selected Houses were instructed to elect the four undergraduate members of the CRR. In each election, however, students were given the option of voting and to send representatives at all. In each House, a majority of students voted to refuse to participate.

The CRR then came up with another plan--designed, in the words of its chairman, "to produce students" for the Committee. Each House Committee was instructed to select at random a panel of eleven students. The four representatives were to be selected at random from these panels.

The new plan seemed safely removed from the democratic process. If even one House had complied, there would have been enough students judges to keep the Committee running throughout the Spring. However, every Harvard and Radcliffe House submitted the decision to a student referendum. And in each House, the students voted to refuse to pick the panels.

The current vote plan omits the crucial option. Students may vote for the present CRR, or for a readjusted CRR. There is no provision to sample opinion on the crucial question: whether we shall have a CRR at all.

The new proposals seem to promise much, but they contain ambiguous and dangerous elements. The "Commission of Inquiry"--with a student majority--will consider violations of the Resolution without taking disciplinary action. Its function will plainly be to set limits on political expression in the University. The actual discipline will, however, be carried out by a 12 member Disciplinary Committee chaired by a member of another faculty. It will, in short, be a Faculty committee, although one with as equal proportion of student members. Its procedures and decisions will reflect the Faculty's wishes on how the political life of the University should be managed.

But the greatest drawback to the new plan is that it will leave untouched the Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities, a shoddy and vague document which forbids any consideration of the context of political actions and gives its enforcers wide latitude in interpreting which of them will be punishable. The current Resolution has given rise to such decisions as that of the CRR last Spring, when it warned that "credible threats" of disruption might be punishable if no disruption followed.

The rationale offered by the organizers of the referendum is instructive: "What we are saying in the referendum is that Faculty legislation now requires a disciplinary body for students. The referendum simply gives students a chance to show their preference for equal representation on the CRR," David C. Anderson '73 explained this week.

In short, the argument runs, the CRR will function, and students must accept it. The Faculty had made its irrevocable decision on how our lives are to be managed, and the best we can hope for is some small part in carrying out its will.

This argument has been raised each time the CRR has come up for a vote, and students have rejected it each time. It is important that they do so this time as well. Although the referendum is described as "in no way binding," those contemplating voting in it should make no mistake about its meaning: if a large turnout ratifies the new proposal, the Faculty Council and the Faculty will then enact it as the student's choice, and the CRR will acquire full legitimacy and become a permanent part of the University landscape.

The only solution to the problem of discipline at Harvard and Radcliffe is a complete renovation of the Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities by the Faculty and a referendum on the new legislation which will give students the power to accept or rejects its proposals. The new legislation should be managed by a disciplinary body made up of students and not responsible to the Faculty. Those who favor such a solution will not find it on the ballot in the current referendum. Rather than voting for what they don't want, they should refuse to vote at all.