The Last Straw

THE AD BOARD has completely lost hold of its senses. Last week it voted to throw seven freshmen out of school for a year for making the Harvard computer print out "This computer test sucks" several dozen times in a row and perform other electronic tricks as a way of protesting the pesky QRR computer test. It was, said one insider, a prank that "any idiot could have done."

A dumb prank. And one that, from the facts that have emerged and have been confirmed by Core Curriculum and Science Center officials, clearly called for some kind of College punishment. But these freshmen didn't get a warning. They didn't get academic or disciplinary probation. They didn't get kicked out for one semester. They got a year--a permanent and possibly devastating smear on their records--and absolutely no chance to appeal to another body.

To a thoughtless and somewhat disruptive trick, the Ad Board responded with a bomb. And unless there are compelling facts justifying the Draconian sentence which haven't come out yet, we think the Ad Board should drastically reduce or overturn its decision when it hears the students' appeal at its meeting tomorrow afternoon.

The more troubling problem is that this phenomenal miscarriage of justice is hardly unprecedented. The case of the QRR Seven is just the latest example of the Ad Board meting out sentences way out of line with the severity of the crime. For example, just three months ago the Ad Board booted two Leverett House sophomores for a year after a series of intersuite practical jokes accidentally culminated in a cologne-soaked towel's briefly catching fire.

Outrageous decisions like these happen because of the Stalinesque nature of the Ad Board, whose members--the top College deans, senior tutors and certain other officials--meet every Tuesday behind closed doors. Where else in this country would you be likely not to know what crime you were charged with? Where else in this country would you have no opportunity to defend yourself in person? Where else in this country would your court-appointed defense attorney also serve as one of your prosecutors? Where else in this country would the judicial body have no responsibility to any higher authority and no requirement to justify or even comment on its procedures?

Both because of its irrational and chronic proclivity toward hitting tiny nails with the largest hammer it can find, and because of its fascist modus operandi, the Administrative Board must be abolished. Likewise, as we have said, the Vietnam-war era Committee on Rights and Responsibilities--which is periodically trotted out solely to punish left-wing political demonstrators without benefit of appeal to another court--must go as well.

What is needed is to replace both bodies with a single judiciary panel whose decisions can be appealed. It would allow students to appear in person and not depend on the dubious good will of a senior tutor. It would allow students to present and question witnesses. It would make its proceedings open to the public when student-defendants request it, in order to mediate between the undergraduate's privacy concerns and the community interest of an open proceeding. It would not make a bogus and unjust distinction in punishment for small-time computer hackers and antiapartheid demonstrators. It would include not just an insular cabal of Harvard bureaucrats but professors and possibly graduate students as well, to give it the balance, compassion, fairness and wisdom it now manifestly lacks.

Only when the Ad Board and the CRR are abolished and replaced can students--especially pranksters, computer and otherwise--have any hope of enjoying due process at Harvard College.