Grad Students Polled on CRR

The Graduate School of Arts and Science's student government has asked its 2400 students to cast ballots this week and next to gauge student opinion on whether to abolish the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR).

The main purpose of the ballots, due April 11, will be to discover "who are in favor of throwing the CRR out of the window altogether," said LaVaughn M. Henry, president of the Graduate Student Council (GSC).

A letter introducing the vote has been delivered to the graduate students. It asks them to choose between a reformed CRR and a new body proposed by an ad hoc committee of the GSC which would meet regularly and hold open hearings upon request.

Much campus criticism has been leveled at the CRR, which has been the subject of a student boycott during much of its 17-year history. The body last fall gave several divestment activists suspended requirements to withdraw from the College for their role in two spring protests.

In the first of those incidents, 45 students took over the 17 Quincy St. headquarters of Harvard's governing Corporation. Later in the term, activists blockaded a South African diplomat inside Lowell House, where he was speaking to a closed meeting of the Conservative Club.

The CRR is nominally made up of six students and seven faculty members, but critics have charged that the membership is not chosen democratically and that the body only acts against political activists. It bases its judgments on the 1960s-era Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities, which stresses the preservation of freedoms of speech and movement.

Last year, the GSC did not send delegates to the CRR, nor did the undergraduate houses. This year it has decided not to initiate the delegate selection process unless the administration takes suitable action to deal with the CRR, Henry said. Most of the undergraduate houses have also voted in their house committees to boycott the CRR at least temporarily.

"The feeling we get is that a majority of students are unaware of the history of the CRR," said Henry. "I really believe that for progress to be made on the CRR issue and for any disciplinary body to function properly, it must be validated by support of the general student body, and that it is the purpose of sending the ballot."