The CRR: No Responsibility, No Legitimacy

I take an old-fashioned view of these things. Of course it's appropriate for students to express their views and people may decide to do more which might lead to arrest. But any time you do this you are taking personal responsibility for your actions. If they remain anonymous, you can't honor their opinions.

--Dean of the College John B Fox Jr '59, after the May 2 blockade of a South African diplomat in Lowell House.

In every case for which the Committee has held hearings in the academic year 1971-72, except that of the April 20-26 occupation of Massachusetts Hall, the only persons charged and disciplined have been leaders of the student radical left...In each of these cases we believe that the complainants brought charges against all of the demonstrators whom they could identify with certainly, but the University administrators have not used the means at their disposal to make as many identifications as possible, and the consequence is that only those whose faces are well known have been charged.

--Dissent from a Committee on Rights and Responsibilities report for the academic year 1971-72.

STUDENTS MUST BE HELD responsible for their actions. Free speech at the University must be preserved. University business must not be disrupted.

These are the clarion calls of administrators and Faculty members again offering up the Committee on Rights Responsibilities (CRR) to hand down justice to the unwashed student masses.

They have sugar coated it, spoken of a new era, apologized for it, offered incentives anything to make the student body believes in a body that is as absurd as it is odious.

A quick glance through the CRR's history reveals tales of gross incompetence and paranoia: a freshman suspended after she was misidentified in a photograph of a demonstration, a student disciplined even though he never received notification of his hearing, action taken against five students because the University did not bother to identify the other 30 to 40 involved.

The CRR was convened in the late 60s during a time when the existence of the University was being threatened and it was endowed with military tribunal like powers, almost all of which survive today.

Because the committee has not made a decision in 10 years, because its procedures are so vague, and because its membership changes every year, members of the community have no reason to trust the body or feel safe placing their Harvard careers it its hands.

All of these arguments have been made, in House Committees and in The Crimson, but they do not get at the foot of the CRR problem: the committee has neither due process nor responsibility for its actions.

Unlike the Administrative Board the CRR carries no stamp of University approval. Once the CRR has been convened, no administrator or Faculty member can affect its outcome. The University can separate itself from--and deny responsibility--for the CRR's actions, even though those actions are likely similar to those that would have been handed down by the Ad Board.

UNLIKE A COURT of law, the CRR allows no right of appeal to a higher tribunal, has no established body of precedent to ensure fair punishment, may allow unsubstantiated hearsay evidence, and is used only to prosecute alleged abuses by students. Although apologists say the Ad Board is unable to handle cases involving hundreds of students, the CRR has never shown itself able to serve justice to any more than the most visible students.

The University and the Faculty have over the last decade repeatedly shown their disdain for the body. They did not use it when students closed down University Hall in 1978. They did not use it when Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger's '38 freedom of speech rights were clearly violated in 1983.

Four years after the Report on College Governance by Professor of Biology John E. Dowling '57, the College has still ignored the report's recommendation that it reconsider the function of the CRR, which it called "essentially non-functional...and...unlikely...[to] become important or significant in College affairs in the foreseeable future."

Suddenly, when the University is worried that things are getting out of hand, the CRR is "significant."

Fox has told the activists that they must take responsibility for their actions and present their names to the administration: "If they remain anonymous, you can't honor their opinions." But, in an institutional sense, the University is doing the same thing. By using a body that is responsible only to itself, the University manages to inflict punishment while refusing to accept responsibility. How can you honor their opinions?

Contrary to what many here would like to believe, the crucial issue has never been discipline. The student protesters--after their initial failure to produce their names at the April 24 sit-in at 17 Quincy St.--have consistently said they are willing face disciplinary action, even go to jail.

The students barricading the Lowell House Junior Common Room would undoubtedly have received more due process had they been arrested on the spot then they are likely to receive from a body that has virtually no experience in handling civil and uncivil disobedience. But the University did not have the guts to defend free speech at Harvard by arresting the students, just as police have arrested activists at colleges and South African consulates around the country.

The students who spent April 24 in the headquarters of Harvard Governing Boards would have been glad to accept whatever punishment the Ad Board could have handed down. But the University has not shown the same guts by accepting full and public responsibility for its response. Students at the sit-in directly asked Dean Fox if he would demand their bursar's cards. For declined.

THE ACTIVISTS, after several years of lassitude, have finally show a some backbone. Where are the conservatives and ever-indignant defenders of the Constitution?--hiding behind the CRR, a body that is inconsistent with principles of due process, principles the CRR was ostensibly created to uphold.

Liberals--and all who support the divestment movement--should oppose the CRR on ethical grounds. It is a kangaroo court that is brought our only when the student movement gets too successful and not, as stated in the Student Handbook, when violations of free speech occur. The CRR's history shows otherwise.

They should oppose the CRR because at allows the University to discipline students without responsibility and--because the body is supposed to include students--to pretend the discipline is a community censure when it is not.

Conservatives should oppose the CRR on the grounds that it is a pitiful parody of due process and a weak and arbitrary defense of free speech on campus. They should demand that the University uphold their right to free speech by arresting students who are in clear violation of the law. They should demand that the University show its backbone by administering discipline directly and not through an illegitimate child of a past age.

The arguments against the CRR swirl around and sometimes contradict each other. But in the absence of even a half-hearted philosophical (as opposed to procedural) defense of the continued existence of the CRR in the '80s, these criticisms strike to the heart of the University's insecurity about its own actions.

Discipline the students, or let them off the hook. But don't bog us down in your dirty work.