Score Another One for Tradition

Every year Harvard undergraduates get to take a familiar test of their loyalty to the memory of the radical activists of the late '60s and early '70s.

The test begins when Archie C. Epps III, dean of students, mails letters to the House committees and the Freshman Council, asking for nominations to the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR)--the disciplinary board formed in 1970 to consider cases of students charged with disruption during campus demonstrations.

So far, students are passing the annual test of allegiance with flying colors. This week, Winthrop, North, South, Leverett, Currier and Adams Houses voted overwhelmingly to refuse to nominate students to serve on the CRR. The Student Assembly likewise voted by a large margin to urge other Houses to boycott the committee.

In the midst of these boycott votes, former student members of the CRR, who have been trying to reform the committee, encouraged support of the boycott until the Faculty accepts a slate of reforms to make the CRR a more equitable body.

If Faculty acceptance of the student-initiated reforms is a condition for the end of the CRR boycott, however, it looks now as if the boycott is going to be around for a long time.

Although the full CRR--including Faculty members--voted to endorse all the reforms, the Faculty Council has refused to accede on two crucial demands: the creation of a separate appeals board to the CRR and the barring of hearsay evidence.

With the South African issue generating increased student protest, many students see the debate over CRR as no longer merely symbolic. Consequently, other Houses will probably join in the boycott in the next few weeks.