mittee on Education Policy admitted that Colonel Pell had submitted a long memo warning the CEP that the elimination of ROTC at Harvard would be "a national disaster of real proportions." But the CEP's secretary, Edward T. Wilcox, denied that the CEP position on ROTC was in any way influenced by Pell's memo. Wilcox said he drafted the CEP resolution and that he "didn't even read" Pell's statement.
President Pusey and other administrators offered retorts to John Kenneth Galbraith's published attack on the Harvard governing system. Pusey said Galbraith's article was "wrong on just about everything," and especially in its suggestion that the Faculty choose Harvard deans. Pusey said that the Corporation should make administrative appointments because it was able to weigh "a wider range of relevancies."
The HUC voted to revive a petition supporting leniency for Paine Hall demonstrators. The petition collected nearly 1000 signatures when it was circulated before Christmas vacation.
January 12: One hundred teaching fellows signed a petition saying they would strike if Paine Hall demonstrators were suspended. But the list of petition signers remained a secret, as those who circulated the petition said they would release the names only if it become "necessary to get a strike organized."
Reports about probable punishment recommendations began to filter out from the Ad Board. Unidentified Faculty members said that the Ad Board would probably recommend separate treatment for the students involved in both Paine Hall and the 1967 Dow demonstration. But other sources said that the Ad Board would simply propose probation for al students involved.
Sixteen Harvard biologists sent a letter to various Senators asking them to reject Water Hickel as the new Secretary of the Interior. The letter said that Alaska governor Hickel was now qualified and that his presence would be "a serious liability" to conservation efforts.
January 13: The special Committee on the University and the City released its report on Harvard-Cambridge relations. The committee, chaired by James Q. Wilson, said the University should appoint a new administrative vice-president to co-ordinate community affairs and that Harvard should step up its efforts to ease Cambridge's housing and unemployment problems.
Residents of the Harvard-owned building where Jane Britton was killed filed a criminal suit charging that the University ignored laws requiring locks on apartment house doors. The tenants claimed that Harvard had installed a few locks only after the still-unsolved murder of Miss Britton.
January 14: The Faculty overruled the Ad Board's recommendation that the five students involved in both Paine Hall and Dow demonstrations be "Required to Withdraw" from the college. Instead, the Faculty placed those five on probation along with the 52 other Paine Hall demonstrators and suspended the "required to Withdraw" sentences until the five students graduated: Faculty members disagreed on the exact meaning of the Faculty's action. Some claimed it was a repudiation of an "overly-harsh" stand by the Ad Board, while others said that it was no repudiation at all, since the Ad Board was not empowered to recommend the kind of suspended sentences the Faculty approved.
The Faculty also tried to deal with one of the issues behind the sit-in--student attendance at Faculty meetings. After tabling a motion to reaffirm the traditional closed-meeting polity, the Faculty decided to spend its January 21 meeting discussing possible changes in the policy.
January 15: Even though the special committee report on Afro-American studies had not yet been released, the CEP met and accepted nearly all the recommendations in the unpublished report. The CEP approved plans for a degree program in Afro-American Studies, a student center for Harvard and Radcliffe blacks, and a committee to revamp African studies. Dean Ford also asked black students to choose three representatives for a new committee to look for Faculty members in the Afro-American studies program
The Radcliffe Judicial Board, after a three-hour meeting, voted not to sever any of the Cliffies who demonstrated in Paine Hall. But the Board revealed no details about the punishment plan it had accepted, saying that it wanted to contact the 21 Cliffie demonstrators first.
The Freshman Union showed tentative signs of letting Cliffies eat inter house lunch there, but President Pusey said that more ambitious plans for co-ed living were impossible as long as Harvard and Radcliffe were separate colleges. Pusey said that the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences would have to have full control over Cliffies before it could let them live in any Harvard houses.
A poll of ROTC students at Harvard showed that one per cent favored quick "escalation for victory" in Vietnam, while 79 per cent said they would like to see immediate U.S withdrawal or some policy more dovish than current American policy.
January 16: Trying to prepare a recommendation for the Faculty's next special meeting, the SFAC approved a resolution calling for student attendance at Faculty meetings. Under the system SFAC sponsored, specific portions of the meetings would be open to student groups who asked to attend. Meanwhile, officers of several, of those student groups--the HUC, the HRPC, the SFAC, and others--said they would hold a symposium on student power during inter session and probably come up with a plan for merging their groups into one new student government organization.
