I SHOULD like to make one further observation about going through channels. I had planned in this article to quote from the tape recordings of actual CRR hearings. I received written permission to do this from the people I had defended. Anderson required that I also receive permission from the principal members of the CRR before he would grant me access to the tapes. I thought this was unfair and unnecessary since the CRR had the right to make an entire tape public if the student made any part of it public. The students, by giving me the right to quote from their hearings, also gave the CRR that same right. Everyone knew this. I told Anderson to write his own story if he was displeased with mine. In my view, and in the view of the students I had defended, there was nothing to hide. But Anderson persisted. There was nothing I could do but try and get

written permission from the members of the Committee and complainants whom Anderson thought necessary.

In my letter asking for this permission I agreed to give the text of my CRIMSON story to the CRR before publication. I would discuss any objections and further guaranteed a note of such objections in the text of the story itself and inclusion of the full objection in that same issue of the CRIMSON which would run the story.

Everyone agreed to these terms except Wilson who never answered my letter. A half-month later I sent Wilson a copy of my first letter by registered mail, return requested. He finally responded that even after considering my answers to another member's questions (this member later agreed to let me listen to the tapes) he, "speaking for himself," would not grant permission. Wilson's reason was that the tapes "were not intended as an historical record or as a source for research or writing."

I wrote to Wilson again to point out that several technical fallacies in his position about the "tape's intentions." I also pointed out that his "know-nothing" view of scholarship was somewhat surprising coming from a professor at a major university. Wilson's reply to my lengthy and well-researched letter deserves quotation in full:

I am afraid I must persist in my objection to your use of the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities' tapes. I realize my attitude may place me in the position of those bureaucrats we both dislike, but it is a carefully considered attitude and thus one I feel obliged to maintain.

President Pusey has praised Wilson's CRR as having "functioned courageously, discerningly, and effectively through the year." (President's Report 1969-70) Perhaps words like courage need redefining for bureaucrats. I always thought of courage as "grace under pressure" or some other Hemingwayesque definition. For bureaucrats and committeemen, however, courage seems to be something more like "invisibility under pressure."

I wrote Wilson back, requesting that he please give further clarification to his "carefully considered attitude." That was in November. It is now three months later. Mr. Wilson, exercising perhaps more of that same kind of courage and discernment, has never answered my letter.

What is the point? I really do not have a personal gripe against Wilson or Anderson, both of whom in many cases were quite kind and helpful. The point is that this is what going through channels means. The "channels" are not really open, they are merely long and complex. For anyone with the patience, or perhaps naivete, to explore them to the end, the result is that the channels are rigged. Rigged the other way. I do not want to raise that statement into a universal truth. But this has been my experience. This has also been the experience of the people who were compelled to take the actions that brought them before the CRR in the first place. This is still the experience at Harvard University in political matters. The CRR is a one-way channel. It is a political firing squad. If the hearings were opened up, this would be clear to anyone who still does not believe it.