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CRR Panels Hear Charges Against 11 More Students

By Jeff Magalif

Members of the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR) have heard the cases of all but two of the 21 people still accused of helping disrupt the March 26 Counter Teach-In" in Sanders Theatre.

The Administration dropped charges last week against two students, and a member of Students for a Just Peace (SJP) dropped charges against a third. The two final hearings are scheduled for Wednesday.

The CRR probably will begin reviewing the cases next week and will announce its verdicts later this month.

Law Faculty members Vern Countryman and Walter A. Reiser Jr., representing the Administration, presented evidence against five students on Friday and Saturday, raising the number of Administration prosecutions thus far to ten.

SJP members presented evidence against seven students on Friday and Saturday, raising their number of prosecutions to 12. Three people whose cases have been heard were charged both by the Administration and by an SJP member.

Six of the 19 people whose cases have been heard did not attend their hearings. No defense was presented in these six cases.

The first Administration case on Friday involved James P. Stodder '72, who was accused of helping disrupt the "Counter Teach-In," "principally" by throwing objects toward the stage. Evidence against him consisted of a portion of the United Press International (UPI) film of the incident that showed him making a throwing motion toward the stage from the back of Sanders.

Stodder admitted to the CRR panel that he had thrown objects toward the stage and claimed that the objects were marshmallows. He brought a bag of marshmallows to his hearing and asked members of the CRR panel to throw them at him while he talked.

This exhibition, Stodder said, would show the panel that being hit by marshmallows-even at close range-does not prevent a person from speaking. The panel members declined to throw the marshmallows.

Two freshman SJP members testi-fied Saturday against Paul Parravano '73, a blind student whom one of them-Stephen P. Rosen '74-had accused of contributing to the disruption of the "Counter Teach-In."

Rosen claimed that Parravano "continuously" shouted obscenities at the stage for about one-and-a-half minutes, while Alex B. Kummel '74 testified that he had seen Parravano chanting.

Parravano denied cursing during the "Counter Teach-In" and told the CRR panel that he had chanted only when he was under the impression that no one was trying to speak on stage. Trying to show the panel that his chanting had been intermittent, he played for them a tape recording he had made at the "Counter Teach-In."

"I chanted out of protest, not with intent to disrupt," Parravano told the panel. "I thought that the people on stage not only were supporting the war but were in some way responsible for carrying it on."

Mark Kaplan '71, accused by the Administration of clapping and chanting, told a panel on Saturday that he had not intended to disrupt the "Counter Teach-In" but had become angered by the insults of speaker Dan Teodoru.

Kaplan and three witnesses testified that a wad of paper which Teodoru threw into the audience at Sanders had hit the defendant.

John H Petrey '72 denied earlier Saturday an Administration charge of "repeatedly clapping his hands and shouting." He claimed that his occasional claps and shouts were responses to specific events on stage and were not attempts to disrupt the "Counter Teach-In."

A witness testified that Petrey had participated in a chant to "Let the Assholes Speak" when Archibald Cox '34 was speaking. Noting that Cox was also trying to quiet the crowd, Countryman asked the witness if "you normally refer to the people you agree with as assholes."

Leroy G. Wade, Jr., resident tutor in North House, defended Ralph J. Coates '71 on Friday. Laszlo Pasztor '73, who lives on the same floor of Comstock Hall as Coates, had brought charges against him.

Wade introduced evidence that Coates had not acted disruptively at the "Counter Teach-In" and that he had joined a chant to "Let the Butchers Speak." A Comstock resident called as a witness testified to pre-existing antagonism between Pasztor and Coates.

Alan M. Dershowitz, professor of Law, rebuked a CRR panel Friday night after being informed just before the hearing of a student he was prepared to defend that his SJP accuser-Daniel J. Pipes '71-had dropped the charges because of insufficient evidence.

Dershowitz accused the CRR of failing to obey Paragraph 4 of the Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities, which requires it to determine that there is "probable cause" for a complaint before proceeding with a hearing.

If the Committee had looked at the evidence before the case, Dershowitz said. it would have been "impossible for [it] to make a determination that probable cause to proceed ... existed." This, he added, would have spared him and his client-Martin H. Goodman '71-" extremely costly and wasteful expenditures of time."

But CRR chairman Donald G. Anderson told Dershowitz that "probable cause" as discussed in the Resolution is different from the legal definition, and that the CRR hears all plausible complaints.

Dershowitz also complained that the hearing, scheduled for 7 p. m., had not actually begun until 7:29 p. m. But Anderson said that "that is not the fault of the Committee: it's the fault of all the previous defendants whose hearings ran on until it was too late to keep up with our schedule."

A member of the CRIMSON faced a CRR panel Saturday morning on charges of disruption brought by Rosen. Three witnesses testified that he had shouted only in response to specific events on stage, and testimony was introduced which showed that he had opposed disruption of the "Counter Teach-In."

Charles H. Perkins '74, also charged by Rosen, told a panel on Friday that he had argued against disruption before the "Counter Teach-In," and a witness supported his testimony. Perkins said that he would not have been so vocal in Sanders had there been another form of protest-like turning backs on the speakers-which he could have joined.

The UPI film showed him holding up a "Murderers" sign and chanting.

Amy C. Brodkey '71 denied Friday night charges of disruption filed against her by SJP co-chairman Arthur N. Waldron '71. She and four witnesses testified that she had been talking with people in Sanders at the times Waldron said she was "clapping and shouting."

Brodkey told the CRR panel that Waldron had grabbed a script out of her hand the night before the "Counter Teach-In" while she was participating in an antiwar skit in the Adams House Dining Room.

While Brodkey's hearing was taking place in Room 10-B of Holyoke Center, three University officers were testifying against Gilbert L. Bagot '73 before another CRR panel in Room 10-A.

W. C. Burriss Young, assistant dean of Freshmen; Dwight D. Miller, senior adviser to Freshmen; and Lawrence F. Stevens, assistant to Dean Dunlop, all said they saw Bagot shouting and chanting at the "Counter Teach-In."

Miller and Stevens were Bagot's advisers during his freshman year last year.

Bagot told the panel he was protesting against people he considered to be "criminals contributing to genocide."

Three Harvard students have acted at different times as prosecutors for the SJP charges. John W. Moscow, a second-year law student, has handled most of the cases; Donald D. Nash, a third-year Law student, and Douglas W. Cooper, a second-year GSAS student, have helped out.

Sanford Kreisberg, a fourth-year GSAS student, has acted as defense counsel in seven different hearings, including the Parravano case and the marshmallow case. David L. Kirp, director of the Center for Law and Education, defended one student.

Nine of the ten present members of the CRR-including seven Faculty members and two grad students-have served on the three-or four-man hearing panels.

Seeing the UPI film of the "Counter Teach-In" for the first time, one Faculty member of the CRR who was not in Sanders on March 26 asked a colleague whether Teodoru was a scheduled speaker or "some madman who had come out of the crowd."

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