Brown Students Face Discipline Over Casey Speech Disruption

A total of six defendants will go before the Brown University Council on Student Affairs (USCA) next Thursday on disciplinary charges connected with the disruption of a speech by CIA director William Casey on Thursday, October 15.

About 15 students delivered a three-minute rendition of Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky" to interrupt Casey, who was speaking on the need for a greater intelligence network to countermand a growing Soviet military threat.

Releasing Frustrations

The subsequent controversy has centered on the nature of the lecture series itself, which is sponsored by the John M. Olin Foundation, a conservative think-tank. Protestors and a number of faculty members have expressed concern over the right-wing nature of the Olin Foundation and its alleged connections with the Olin Mathison Chemical Corporation, a chief supplier of gunpowder to the armed forces.

"What upsets me most is the Olin Lecture Series, not Mr. Casey specifically," Stefan Cluver, a junior and one of the students being charged said, adding, "What you have is an academic institution being used for political purposes."

The administration claims that the students, known as the "Jabberwocky Six," are guilty of the offense listed in the USCA regulations as disrupting "the exercise by others of the basic rights to which they are entitled on University property." If found guilty, the students face punishments ranging from simple reprimand to dismissal.

One of the protesters, Tony Puryear, a former student who therefore cannot be charged for violating USCA regulations, was banned from campus by Brown police. He will be subject to a misdemeanor arrest should he set foot on Brown property without an police escort, John Kuprevich, police and security director, said.