Inside the CRR- The Committee in Person

( The author is a fourth-year graduate student in English. Last spring he defended twenty people before the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities and attended many other hearings as an observer. He is presently writing his doctoral thesis on the theme of justice and its absurd procedures in Shakespeare, Brecht, Camus and Kafka. )

( This is the second of a two-part feature on the CRR. Part one appeared yesterday. )

There has been a great deal said lately about radical rhetoric. In the above I have tried to show the truths behind the CRR's own souffled rhetoric and point out its double-thinking. ("We closed the hearings in order to open the discussions.") The CRR has attempted to appear as an objective, disinterested, University-wide Committee enforcing basic rules of conduct for the University community. This is not the case. Instead of examining substantive issues, causes, and actions and equally applying the entire Resolution, the CRR has churned out a characteristically obtuse and deceptive collection of deliberations, memoranda, directives and guidelines. Whenever any of these documents is scrutinized the underlying assumption always persists: The CRR and the Administration are right, the students are responsible.

The bureaucratic mode is quite simple. Instead of examining assumptions and issues, only consider technicate; if the challenge persists- set up calities. Whenever challenged- obfusnew bureaucratic structures to engulf it, erode it, or simply outlive it.

THE CRR hearings last Spring were held in the penthouse of Holyoke Center behind five sets of locked doors, and at times, ten armed policemen. The dizzy and intimidated student, after maneuvering through this maze of defenses, was herded into a hearing room and confronted by a long table and the three members of his hearing panel. These panels were headed by one of three faculty members; either James Q. Wilson, Alan Heimert, or Donald Anderson. The other two members of the panel, one faculty member and one student, remained for the most part silent onlookers.

Whatever tolerance the CRR may have had initially, whatever desire it may have had to consider the broad context of complaints- these notions were soon exhausted. The hearing panels were concerned with finding out one thing- were you there? Questions about the righteousness of your cause and extenuating circumstances became, in legal terminology, irrelevant and immaterial. It is important to stress this. The CRR was not a commission of inquiry or a blue-ribbon investigating panel. It was simply a disciplinary board, and its title, Committee of Rights and Responsibilities, was a misnomer. The Committee was not concerned with anyone's rights or responsibilities. It was concerned with punishing students, not investigating student claims; it was roughly equivalent to a criminal court. A real committee of rights and responsibilities, of course, ought to have been tantamount to arbitration. Significantly, the CRR had the trappings and forms of arbitration, but its substance was always simple punishment.

Now the CRR makes a great hooped-do about listening to mitigating circumstances; in fact, one of the reasons why it denied open hearings was that "greater formality might well lead to less attention being given to mitigating circumstances." This is simply untrue. In the 30 hearings I attended last Spring, I listened to brilliant, cogent, and irrefutable testimony by students who attempted to explain to the Committee why people found it necessary to take the simple non-violent act of blocking University Hall. Never did the CRR give one iota of consideration to any of this.

I remember one hearing where a graduate student had prepared a very convincing and well-researched brief showing how the Administration had lied about its claims in reference to paying striking workers. He attempted in a very orderly and simple way to read this brief into the record. Two members of the panel, one a student, told him to hurry up, and finally shut him off, saying if he wished, he might write the CRR a letter.

On other occasions the panel can be less brutal and more patient. At one hearing James Q. Wilson got all checked up as he patiently explained that while Harvard is a great place sometimes getting things done around here is very difficult, as difficult at times as trying to move a wet string. He even acted out pushing a wet string on the table. He told the accused girl to have patience, be reasonable, keep trying. Two days later, the Committee informed the same girl that non-violently standing on the steps of University Hall with 150 other people while Samuel R. Williamson tried to get into his office had earned her a suspended requirement to withdraw. It seems that a wet string can move very fast sometimes.

In other cases the CRR is not even so very concerned with the empirical facts. Dale Fink was an undergraduate accused of blocking Williamson and Donald Anderson when they tried to enter Holyoke Center on May 16. At his hearing Fink testified that he was present at Holyoke Center that morning, but that it was not his intention to block anyone, and in fact, he had stood away from the door to make his intention clear. Williamson testified that he saw Fink standing in front of the door in the third row of demonstrators. This situation is common in criminal cases. A says he was, B says he was not. The accepted criterion of judgment is "reasonable doubt." Fink was found guilty and thrown out of school. This was in June.

After the hearing, I turned up a photograph of the demonstration at the CRIMSON. It showed Fink standing about five feet away from the door. The people in front of the door had their arms linked and this chain of people extended all the way to Fink, but did not include him. It appeared that Fink's testimony was correct. He was present at the demonstration but he did not intend to obstruct anyone; he stood away from the door and did not link arms.

I presented this photograph to James Q. Wilson and requested a new hearing. Wilson explained that it was now the middle of June and most of the Committee members had left Cambridge. He offered to show the photograph to the Committee members still in town to see what their reactions would be. It seemed that we were back to the wet string again. I had doubts about the forcefulness of Wilson's advocacy in Fink's favor, but under the circumstances, I accepted his terms.

ONE OF THE Committee members in town was Donald Anderson, whom you will remember was one of the signers of the complaint against Fink. I met Anderson in the street a few days after I spoke to Wilson and asked him if he had seen the photo. He told me that "Mr. Wilson showed me the photograph briefly this morning and said he thought there were little grounds for appeal." At the time I did not point out that saying "there were little grounds for appeal" was perhaps not the best way of introducing evidence. I also did not ask Anderson if he thought Wilson had predisposed him in any way. Anderson, one must assume, was under great pressure already since he was both complainant and judge.

When I saw Wilson again, he did not exactly shock me when he said that the people to whom he showed the photo thought that there "were little grounds for appeal." I asked Wilson what his own opinion was. He responded that he thought the photo was interesting in that it showed the people in front of the door had their arms linked since this was something the CRR did not know at the time of the hearing. He added that he personally thought anyone in the immediate area was a participant whether he had his arms linked or not. I informed Wilson that I should like to argue this point before the Committee in a formal appeal. That was fine with Wilson, who said there was only one problem- the Interim Committee, the Committee of which Wilson was chairman, had disbanded. If I wanted to appeal formally, I had to do this with the new Committee. "And who is the chairman of the new Committee?" I naively asked. "Why, Don Anderson."

Anderson (you will recall once again that he is one of the complainants in this case) told me when I saw him once again that the Committee had based its original decision on three possible levels of guilt in the incident for which Fink was charged. First, it considered those people with their arms linked in front of the doors; second, those close to this

group; and third, those in the surrounding area. It gave different punishments to each group. Fink was in the second group, and the Committee deemed this serious enough to warrant suspension.

I am a patient fellow. I listened to his story and I nodded my head here and there while Anderson explained this to me. "When Anderson finished explaining this I learned back in my chair but I could not suppress a little grin. Slowly, ever so slowly, I began to explain. . . "You see, Mr. Anderson, Mr. Wilson just told me that one of the interesting things about the photo was that it showed people in front of the doors with their arms linked, and this was something that Mr. Wilson said the Committee did not know at the time it punished Fink. So, you see now Mr. Anderson, this little story you have been telling me, this story about three levels of punishments, well, it's a nice thought isn't it, I mean three levels of punishment, it's a very nice idea, but you know, it's, it's. . . well, I don't like to mention such things, but it's a little inexact."

Even the saturnine Mr. Anderson could not suppress a little grin from spreading over his face. Mr. Anderson had made up this three-leveled cake about these levels of punishment, and, well, this cake had just fallen into his lap, and not even the saturnine Mr. Anderson could stop himself from grinning with all this cake in his lap. I then informed the grinning Mr. Anderson that I would file the papers necessary for a formal appeal. And I did.

On July 10th I received the first piece of correspondence from the new CRR. The Committee had new members, but the committee is always the same.

My request for the appeal had briefly stated the relevant issues:

From this photograph, I believe, it can be shown that Mr. Fink was not part of the group which obstructed Mr. Williamson in that he did not stand in front of the doorway and did not link arms with those who did, all of whom have their arms linked.

This struck me as a clear and undeniable reason for an appeal hearing- Mr. Anderson's cakes notwithstanding. The Committee replied:

While the Committee is prepared to waive the deadline for asking for reconsideration, it is prepared to reopen the case only if you submit in writing compelling reasons for doing so.

This criterion proved to be quite a shock. The Committee's grounds for allowing an appeal hearing, "compelling evidence" were outrageous. The Committee had set more stringent grounds for granting an appeal hearing than it had previously stipulated for acquittal. This initial outrageous requirement was exacerbated by more Committee mumbo-jumpo:

Especially under the circumstances, a new Committee not by and large previously associated with the case and without student members as yet, the Committee will be very loathe to consider subtle points of interpretation and evaluation of the significance of facts which have already been considered quite exhaustively by the previous Committee in the context of the whole set of events and cases surrounding this incident.

This was clearly no longer nonsense on stilts, this was nonsense on crutches- but nonsense in any case. The "subtle points of interpretation and evaluation" were really quite simple. Fink was not there. The Committee had not treated anything "quite exhaustively." The Committee had not known where Fink was standing. This amazing letter continued, and even returned to English, to warn Fink that "if the case is reopened . . . it is entirely possible that sanctions would be made more rather than less severe under the circumstances."

I went to see Anderson with the request that I be allowed to argue in person before the Committee and ask simply for a new hearing- not an acquittal, just a new hearing. I realized it was a new Committee, and that it might be "very loathe" to consider old business, but it seemed to me that this should not be held against Fink. I also told Anderson that I thought the Committee's grounds for appeal, "compelling reasons," were absurd. I suggested that I ought to be allowed to argue in person for Fink at the very least. Anderson agreed on both counts but added that he did not have the individual power to allow me to appear before the Committee. He had to ask the Committee's approval for this. This of course was untrue. I went home and soaked a string in a tub of water; it was very hard to push. I also began to read Kafka.

A week later Anderson told me that the Committee would not let me appear in person to argue for the appeal hearing. I said this was outrageous and Anderson agreed.

Let it be clear that the faculty members of the Committee of Rights and Responsibilities which is now sitting denied a defense advisor the right to argue in person for a new hearing based on new evidence without giving any reasons, compelling or otherwise. When you are told to go through channels, this is what is meant.

Anderson told me to write a new appeal. On July 15th I submitted Fink's third request for a new hearing and again requested to be present to argue in its support. On July 31st the Committee "regretted" to inform Fink that his application for an appeal had been denied, and that he could not return to school in September.

I SHOULD like to make one further observation about going through channels. I had planned in this article to quote from the tape recordings of actual CRR hearings. I received written permission to do this from the people I had defended. Anderson required that I also receive permission from the principal members of the CRR before he would grant me access to the tapes. I thought this was unfair and unnecessary since the CRR had the right to make an entire tape public if the student made any part of it public. The students, by giving me the right to quote from their hearings, also gave the CRR that same right. Everyone knew this. I told Anderson to write his own story if he was displeased with mine. In my view, and in the view of the students I had defended, there was nothing to hide. But Anderson persisted. There was nothing I could do but try and get

written permission from the members of the Committee and complainants whom Anderson thought necessary.

In my letter asking for this permission I agreed to give the text of my CRIMSON story to the CRR before publication. I would discuss any objections and further guaranteed a note of such objections in the text of the story itself and inclusion of the full objection in that same issue of the CRIMSON which would run the story.

Everyone agreed to these terms except Wilson who never answered my letter. A half-month later I sent Wilson a copy of my first letter by registered mail, return requested. He finally responded that even after considering my answers to another member's questions (this member later agreed to let me listen to the tapes) he, "speaking for himself," would not grant permission. Wilson's reason was that the tapes "were not intended as an historical record or as a source for research or writing."

I wrote to Wilson again to point out that several technical fallacies in his position about the "tape's intentions." I also pointed out that his "know-nothing" view of scholarship was somewhat surprising coming from a professor at a major university. Wilson's reply to my lengthy and well-researched letter deserves quotation in full:

I am afraid I must persist in my objection to your use of the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities' tapes. I realize my attitude may place me in the position of those bureaucrats we both dislike, but it is a carefully considered attitude and thus one I feel obliged to maintain.

President Pusey has praised Wilson's CRR as having "functioned courageously, discerningly, and effectively through the year." (President's Report 1969-70) Perhaps words like courage need redefining for bureaucrats. I always thought of courage as "grace under pressure" or some other Hemingwayesque definition. For bureaucrats and committeemen, however, courage seems to be something more like "invisibility under pressure."

I wrote Wilson back, requesting that he please give further clarification to his "carefully considered attitude." That was in November. It is now three months later. Mr. Wilson, exercising perhaps more of that same kind of courage and discernment, has never answered my letter.

What is the point? I really do not have a personal gripe against Wilson or Anderson, both of whom in many cases were quite kind and helpful. The point is that this is what going through channels means. The "channels" are not really open, they are merely long and complex. For anyone with the patience, or perhaps naivete, to explore them to the end, the result is that the channels are rigged. Rigged the other way. I do not want to raise that statement into a universal truth. But this has been my experience. This has also been the experience of the people who were compelled to take the actions that brought them before the CRR in the first place. This is still the experience at Harvard University in political matters. The CRR is a one-way channel. It is a political firing squad. If the hearings were opened up, this would be clear to anyone who still does not believe it.