But Punishment Is Justified

APART FROM how Dean Robert C. Clark has gone about fighting the protests at the Law School is the underlying question of whether he has the right to punish those who sit in at his office and disrupt the operations of the Law School. Clark has said in a letter to all law students that he will likely take disciplinary action against participants in future sit-ins. We believe Clark is justified in making these threats. While photographing and intimidating innocent bystanders is uncalled for, the Law School's right to discipline those who break its rules cannot be questioned.

From Clark's perspective, the issue is simple. The sit-ins keep him and other administrators from doing their jobs. He sees no compelling reason to allow students to disrupt the operations of the Law School by allowing them to violate the University rules they had agreed to follow. The students' liberal sympathizers may reject this reasoning on the grounds that the students are making a political statement that should not be suppressed. But would this position hold if the activists were conservative students disrupting the ability of University Health Services to provide abortion counseling? What if the Association Against Learning in the Absence of Religion and Morality (AALARM) held protests disrupting lectures by liberal professors? The situations are analogous; it is hypocritical to suggest that some law-breaking protests deserved immunity while others deserve punishment.

FROM THE STUDENTS' PERSPECTIVE, there is an even more powerful argument to accept disciplinary action. The nature of civil disobedience mandates that those who participate are willing to make personal sacrifices for their cause. It is this willingness that transforms a slumber party in an administrative office into a genuine act of protest. "We will try to persuade with our words, but, if our words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts," said the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1960. "We will always be willing to talk and seek fair compromise, but we are ready to suffer when necessary, and even risk our lives to become witnesses to the truth as we see it. I realize that this approach will mean suffering and sacrifice. It may even mean going to jail. If such is the case, the resistor must be willing to fill the jailhouses of the South."

Of course, there are limits to fair punishment for relatively mild violations of University rules. The students should not be expelled for a sit-in. But lesser penalties including probation and suspension may be justified. In the end, we suspect that such penalties and the press coverage that would follow can only advance the worthy cause of diversity at the Law School.