CRR: Token Reform

WHEN A HANDFUL of reform-minded freshmen took it upon themselves two years ago to change the composition and procedures of the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR) by breaking the seven-year boycott of the CRR and boring from within, there was some hope that they would be able to force the Faculty either to make significant changes in the CRR or abolish it entirely. At last week's Faculty meeting, the members of the class of 1980 who broke the CRR boycott were able to see the fruits of their labor enacted in Faculty legislation. They could not fail to have been disappointed. As Dean Rosovsky observed, change at Harvard proceeds with glacial speed. The CRR proves his point. What is unclear, however, is whether the CRR's glacier is advancing or retreating.

Established in the wake of the April 1969 student strike as a student-Faculty committee to discipline political demonstrators, the CRR was boycotted by undergraduates from 1970 to 1977. Although the boycott began more because student members of the committee felt personally uncomfortable disciplining fellow students than because of organized protest, the boycott quickly became an expression of student dissatisfaction with the CRR's structure and procedures.

Students objected to the CRR's composition, weighted eight-to-six in favor of the Faculty; to the vague definition of offenses punishable by the CRR; to its ability to deny students the right to legal counsel at its hearings; to its ability to consider unreliable hearsay evidence against students; to the lack of a separate appeals board; and to its closed hearings.

The package of so-called reforms drafted by the student and Faculty members of the CRR over the past two years, however, addressed only three of these problems. As recommended by the CRR and approved by the Faculty, the CRR is now weighted only seven-to-six against students, its hearings may be open only if both the University and the accused students concur, and neither students nor the University administration can be represented by legal counsel at CRR hearings.

MANY OF THE CRR's most objectionable features remain unchanged. The Resolution on Right's and Responsibilities, the CRR's charter, is still vague in defining violations; the CRR still hears appeals of its own decisions; and it may still consider hearsay evidence (i.e. one student's testimony that another student told him he saw a third student present at a demonstration). Although lawyers may not represent students at future CRR hearings, it is likely that University charges against students will be investigated and drafted, by high-priced lawyers in the University's Office of the General Counsel, as they have been in the past, and students will be left to respond on their own.

The members of the Class of 1980 clearly failed in their efforts. The reason for their failure, however, lies not in any deficiency of the reformers, but in the nature of the CRR itself. It is an inherently repressive body designed by the Faculty to punish those who disagree with University policies and have enough courage to express their disagreement in a political demonstration. Student participation in the CRR can never be an effective or meaningful way of expressing student views on administrative decisions and therefore can never be supported. The Crimson has frequently advocated abolition of the CRR in the past and nothing in the legislation passed by the Faculty last week solved--or even addressed--the problems of the CRR that make its abolition imperative. The CRR's creation was a mistake that the Faculty can remedy only by repealing the Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities and abolishing the CRR. Until that happens, the student boycott must continue.