No Punishment

THIS WEEK the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities will announce the disciplinary action to be taken against four students who chanted at Dean May while he read a statement to OBU members occupying University Hall on December 11. Once again, there can be no punishment.

The students have been charged with interfering with the normal processes of the University and obstructing Dean May's freedom of speech and movement. Even within these dicta-the Committee's own terms-punishment would be an absurdity. Yelling at a Dean who is reading an eviction order over a loud speaker hardly constitutes an interference with normal University processes. And, since the demonstrators neither rendered Dean May's statement inaudible to the occupiers of the building nor prevented the Dean from walking away after he had finished, it would be rather difficult to hold the demonstrators responsible for obstructing May's freedom of speech and movement.

Yet, even were the demonstrators guilty by the Committee's criteria, there is no getting around the fact that the Committee itself should not have the right to set up such criteria or judge according to them. In a polarized community such as this one, a Committee such as the CRR can only dole out punishment that is inherently political in content-punishment against those who are diametrically opposed to the order in power that the CRR represents. The demonstrators who chanted at Dean May were fighting for the just OBU demands, attempting to rectify racist hiring policies that the University has shown scant interest in changing; one can say with certainty that any punishment they may receive from the CRR will not repress the movement for an end to racism at Harvard.

Indeed, in the case of these four students, there is little evidence for why Dean May is prosecuting them other than as part of the continuing attempt by the Administration to impose political repression. The Dean has gone to great lengths to dramatize the damage the demonstrators' yelling did to his psyche, but he might be better off to realize that heckling has always been a part of American life. If politicians, baseball players, nightclub comedians and Harvard presidents can take it, so can he.