( The author is a fourth-year graduate student in English. Last spring he defended twenty people before the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities and attended many other hearings as an observer. He is presently writing his doctoral thesis on the theme of justice and its absurd procedures in Shakespeare, Brecht, Camus and Kafka. )

( This is the second of a two-part feature on the CRR. Part one appeared yesterday. )

There has been a great deal said lately about radical rhetoric. In the above I have tried to show the truths behind the CRR's own souffled rhetoric and point out its double-thinking. ("We closed the hearings in order to open the discussions.") The CRR has attempted to appear as an objective, disinterested, University-wide Committee enforcing basic rules of conduct for the University community. This is not the case. Instead of examining substantive issues, causes, and actions and equally applying the entire Resolution, the CRR has churned out a characteristically obtuse and deceptive collection of deliberations, memoranda, directives and guidelines. Whenever any of these documents is scrutinized the underlying assumption always persists: The CRR and the Administration are right, the students are responsible.

The bureaucratic mode is quite simple. Instead of examining assumptions and issues, only consider technicate; if the challenge persists- set up calities. Whenever challenged- obfusnew bureaucratic structures to engulf it, erode it, or simply outlive it.

THE CRR hearings last Spring were held in the penthouse of Holyoke Center behind five sets of locked doors, and at times, ten armed policemen. The dizzy and intimidated student, after maneuvering through this maze of defenses, was herded into a hearing room and confronted by a long table and the three members of his hearing panel. These panels were headed by one of three faculty members; either James Q. Wilson, Alan Heimert, or Donald Anderson. The other two members of the panel, one faculty member and one student, remained for the most part silent onlookers.

Whatever tolerance the CRR may have had initially, whatever desire it may have had to consider the broad context of complaints- these notions were soon exhausted. The hearing panels were concerned with finding out one thing- were you there? Questions about the righteousness of your cause and extenuating circumstances became, in legal terminology, irrelevant and immaterial. It is important to stress this. The CRR was not a commission of inquiry or a blue-ribbon investigating panel. It was simply a disciplinary board, and its title, Committee of Rights and Responsibilities, was a misnomer. The Committee was not concerned with anyone's rights or responsibilities. It was concerned with punishing students, not investigating student claims; it was roughly equivalent to a criminal court. A real committee of rights and responsibilities, of course, ought to have been tantamount to arbitration. Significantly, the CRR had the trappings and forms of arbitration, but its substance was always simple punishment.

Now the CRR makes a great hooped-do about listening to mitigating circumstances; in fact, one of the reasons why it denied open hearings was that "greater formality might well lead to less attention being given to mitigating circumstances." This is simply untrue. In the 30 hearings I attended last Spring, I listened to brilliant, cogent, and irrefutable testimony by students who attempted to explain to the Committee why people found it necessary to take the simple non-violent act of blocking University Hall. Never did the CRR give one iota of consideration to any of this.

I remember one hearing where a graduate student had prepared a very convincing and well-researched brief showing how the Administration had lied about its claims in reference to paying striking workers. He attempted in a very orderly and simple way to read this brief into the record. Two members of the panel, one a student, told him to hurry up, and finally shut him off, saying if he wished, he might write the CRR a letter.

On other occasions the panel can be less brutal and more patient. At one hearing James Q. Wilson got all checked up as he patiently explained that while Harvard is a great place sometimes getting things done around here is very difficult, as difficult at times as trying to move a wet string. He even acted out pushing a wet string on the table. He told the accused girl to have patience, be reasonable, keep trying. Two days later, the Committee informed the same girl that non-violently standing on the steps of University Hall with 150 other people while Samuel R. Williamson tried to get into his office had earned her a suspended requirement to withdraw. It seems that a wet string can move very fast sometimes.

In other cases the CRR is not even so very concerned with the empirical facts. Dale Fink was an undergraduate accused of blocking Williamson and Donald Anderson when they tried to enter Holyoke Center on May 16. At his hearing Fink testified that he was present at Holyoke Center that morning, but that it was not his intention to block anyone, and in fact, he had stood away from the door to make his intention clear. Williamson testified that he saw Fink standing in front of the door in the third row of demonstrators. This situation is common in criminal cases. A says he was, B says he was not. The accepted criterion of judgment is "reasonable doubt." Fink was found guilty and thrown out of school. This was in June.

After the hearing, I turned up a photograph of the demonstration at the CRIMSON. It showed Fink standing about five feet away from the door. The people in front of the door had their arms linked and this chain of people extended all the way to Fink, but did not include him. It appeared that Fink's testimony was correct. He was present at the demonstration but he did not intend to obstruct anyone; he stood away from the door and did not link arms.

I presented this photograph to James Q. Wilson and requested a new hearing. Wilson explained that it was now the middle of June and most of the Committee members had left Cambridge. He offered to show the photograph to the Committee members still in town to see what their reactions would be. It seemed that we were back to the wet string again. I had doubts about the forcefulness of Wilson's advocacy in Fink's favor, but under the circumstances, I accepted his terms.

ONE OF THE Committee members in town was Donald Anderson, whom you will remember was one of the signers of the complaint against Fink. I met Anderson in the street a few days after I spoke to Wilson and asked him if he had seen the photo. He told me that "Mr. Wilson showed me the photograph briefly this morning and said he thought there were little grounds for appeal." At the time I did not point out that saying "there were little grounds for appeal" was perhaps not the best way of introducing evidence. I also did not ask Anderson if he thought Wilson had predisposed him in any way. Anderson, one must assume, was under great pressure already since he was both complainant and judge.

When I saw Wilson again, he did not exactly shock me when he said that the people to whom he showed the photo thought that there "were little grounds for appeal." I asked Wilson what his own opinion was. He responded that he thought the photo was interesting in that it showed the people in front of the door had their arms linked since this was something the CRR did not know at the time of the hearing. He added that he personally thought anyone in the immediate area was a participant whether he had his arms linked or not. I informed Wilson that I should like to argue this point before the Committee in a formal appeal. That was fine with Wilson, who said there was only one problem- the Interim Committee, the Committee of which Wilson was chairman, had disbanded. If I wanted to appeal formally, I had to do this with the new Committee. "And who is the chairman of the new Committee?" I naively asked. "Why, Don Anderson."

Anderson (you will recall once again that he is one of the complainants in this case) told me when I saw him once again that the Committee had based its original decision on three possible levels of guilt in the incident for which Fink was charged. First, it considered those people with their arms linked in front of the doors; second, those close to this