Faculty to Discuss CRR, Afro Report; No Vote Expected at Today's Meeting

Discussion concerning the future of the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities is at the top of the agenda at today's regularly scheduled Faculty meeting.

The Faculty will also engage in a preliminary discussion centering around the report issued last month by the Afro-American Studies Review Committee.

The meeting will engage in extended discussion of the two issues, but no formal motions will be brought to a vote.

The meeting caps two months of discussion concerning alternatives to the often-criticized CRR. Faculty members and students have charged that it lacks provisions to insure due process.

The Faculty will consider for the first time the Review Committee's recommendations. The nine-member Committee spent one year reviewing the Department's administration and structure and released its findings in a 34-page report.

The Review Committee recommended that Afro-American Studies be made available as a joint concentration with other undergraduate departments.

Rotated

It also recommended that the chairmanship of the Department be rotated every three or four years. Ewart Guinier has served as chairman since the Department was founded in the Fall of 1969.

Regarding the CRR, the Faculty will continue a discussion initiated at a special Faculty meeting October 3. Several Faculty members registered strong objections to the continued existence of the CRR in its present form and presented several motions calling for substantive reforms in the Committee's operation.

The Faculty Council has circulated a memorandum enumerating three alternative mechanisms for administering the Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities.

They are retaining the present CRR with the Committee reviewing its own rules in the light of Faculty discussion; retaining the present CRR with major modifications, including open hearings and student participation and, abolishing the Committee in its present form.

In place of the CRR, the memo suggested that violations of the Resolution could be handled by administrative boards, a University-wide CRR, the state courts, or a panel of outside experts.

Although no final decision regarding the CRR will be reached at today's meeting, the Faculty may take a straw vote at the end of meeting to get some idea of the general direction the Faculty wishes to take on the issue.