Committee Turns Down Appeal by 19 Students On Sit-in Punishments

The Committee on Rights and Responsibilities rejected a collective request for reconsideration of its punishments of students who participated in the November 19 sit-in at the office of Dean Ernest R. May.

The committee said that the request, which was made on December 18 in a letter signed by 19 of those disciplined for the sit-in, "alleges no significant procedural error and advances no new information or evidence which, if available to the Committee at the time of its disciplinary decision, might have altered that decision."

The committee also announced that hearings to establish findings of fact on Dean May's latest charges, resulting from the December 5 and December 11 sit-ins at University Hall will begin on January 12.

The committee did grant a new hearing for Alan Gilbert, teaching fellow in Government, and another student who entered an individual appeal. Gilbert, apparently, never received notification from the committee of the charges that had been brought against him.

The request was rejected by the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities on the same day that it was received, its signers said, "Also the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities is empowered to hear the appeals to its own decisions. In other words, the appeal board is the same tribunal as the one whose decisions are being appealed," one student said.

The students' request for reconsideration was based "on Harvard's specific methods of dealing with political activists," they said.

The committee, "has singled out a few students to set an example with which to intimidate the rest of the University community," the letter said. Some students who had acted in concert in Dean May's office were punished more harshly than others with equal disciplinary records, the appeal said.

The request also protested the closed hearings, saying that the committee was "attempting to prevent our ideas from being presented and these ideas from being pursued."

"By establishing procedures for 'dealing with' campus 'disruptions,' the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities isable to institute responsibilities which apply only to those who protest basic University policies, and imposes no such responsibilities upon the Administration," they said.

The committee reconfirmed all punishments, with the two exceptions, and ordered them to take effect immediately.

Forty complaints have been field so far with the committee concerning the December 5 and December 11 occupations of University Hall by OBU members. Four of these are directed at students who jeered Dean May on December 11 while he was reading a warning of possible suspension through his bullhorn to University Hall occupiers.