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A Day in the Life of the Rights Committee

The Committee on Rights and Responsibilities reluctantly conceded yesterday that a student appearing before a fact-finding committee has the right to select as his "advisor" a member of the press.

In the belief that formal disciplinary hearings should not be conducted in private and behind locked doors-as long as the accused student wants his hearing to be public-I arranged with Barry Margolin '70, a white student charged with shouting at Dean May during the OBU demonstration on December 11, to attend yesterday's hearing as his "advisor."

The Committee's rules permit each student facing charges to bring one "student or academic advisor." My function as an advisor was entirely limited to reporting; as I told the three-man fact-finding panel, I came as an advisor because "it was the only way I could get into the meeting." Previous hearings have been closed to press and public.

Three Locked Doors

The hearing room was on the tenth floor of Holyoke Center. Margolin and I had to pass through three locked doors, guarded by University police. Wooden bars have been placed over the glass doors.

In the hallway outside the hearing room, we waited with Dean May and Samuel R. Williamson Jr., Allston Burr Senior Tutor in Kirkland House, Dean Sheppard '71-charged with the same offense as Margolin-and Michael J. Bishop '70, another CRIMSON reporter who planned to serve as Sheppard's "advisor" in order to report what went on.

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When the panel called us into the hearing room, I stated that I was from the CRIMSON and intended to write a story about the hearing.

"If you're his advisor, you cannot be a reporter," said James Q. Wilson, professor of Government and chairman of the Committee. "The reason the hearing is closed is both to protect the student's private and personal relations to the University and to preserve order," Wilson said.

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Margolin denounced a hearing closed to the press as "a Star Chamber proceeding. I will not participate in a hearing to which there is no public access," he said. "An attempt to prove the case against me is possible only in secret."

Richard W. Hausler '72, the only student member of the fact-finding panel, spoke against ordering me from the hearing. "It would be difficult to exclude a person who said he was an advisor. It's impossible to say that once you attend you may not say what happened," he said.

Margolin charged that the hearings were kept closed to protect administrators. Wilson denied the charge. If the hearings could be opened on a student's request, he said, a student might find himself "under psychological duress" from other students to open his own hearing.

Finally, Wilson, Hausler, and the other panel member-Joel M. Porte, Allston Burr Senior Tutor in Quincy House-decided to call the entire nine man committee together in closed session to decide how to interpret their rules.

May, Williamson, Margolin, and I were asked to leave the room. The Committee met for about 15 minutes. They then called us back, and Wilson said I would be allowed to stay. But if an article on the hearings were published, he said, "the Committee reserves the right, on its initiative, to publish a full transcript."

The Committee's tape recorder, not used in ordinary cases, was turned on. The Committee could publish the transcript if I wrote anything about the hearing, but Wilson said that Margolin would have a chance to gain access to a transcript only by applying to the Committee.

Wrestling Practice

Sheppard waited outside with Bishop through all of this and the hour-long hearing which followed. He was finally told he could go to lunch while a hearing was in progress for Richard E. Hyland '69-4, but he returned to find Hyland's hearing still in progress. The committee interrupted Hy-land's hearing so that Sheppard would not miss wrestling practice.

But Sheppard's hearing was never held. Wilson asked Bishop at the beginning what his function was Bishop replied that he was "advising" Sheppard by reporting for the CRIMSON. Wilson said, "We allow advisers to come but not reporters."

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