THE SURPRISING THING about the student boycott of the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities is not that it may soon end, but that it has lasted so long. Most of the incendiary issues of the late 1960s and early '70s would today raise but a murmur of protest among a small handful of students. Issues like Harvard's involvement with the Defense Department or its alleged connections to the Central Intelligence Agency or the University's ownership of stock in Gulf Oil pale in most student minds when compared to problems like floaters or overcrowding in the Houses. Yet, the CRR, much like the baton in a relay race, is an issue that students have passed on to freshman class after freshman class since 1971, and it is only now that it appears that the pass is about to be fumbled.

Last week, a freshmen referendum voted by a narrow plurality to begin the process of nominating student members for the CRR. Although there was a plurality of 23 votes (out of a total of 600) in favor of sending freshmen representatives to the CRR, more than 100 of the freshmen checked a box on the ballot saying they didn't know what should be done, thereby denying the anti-boycott voters a clear majority.

Last year, in a similar referenda--one among freshmen and another in Mather House--students also voted to break the boycott. But despite the referendum votes last year, the CRR boycott was maintained. In Mather House, a group of 11 students, chosen at random as the Faculty mandated in its CRR selection procedures, decided not to nominate any of its members for CRR duty. Last year's Freshmen Council, after discussing the close referendum vote, decided to swing in line with the Houses and decided not to begin the selection process. The Freshmen Council could do the same this year, and it probably should.

What do people have against the CRR? To many students, the CRR sounds like a perfectly reasonable committee and it was in fact originally seen as a liberalizing measure. Before 1969, all discipline at Harvard was handled by the Administrative Board, a group of the senior tutors, senior advisors, and the College's major deans. But after the discipline cases resulting from a demonstration at Paine Hall in late 1968 revealed that the Ad Board was badly divided on political issues there was sentiment among Faculty members that the Ad Board should not be in the business of disciplining students involved in political demonstrations.

So when students struck and occupied University Hall in 1969, the Faculty appointed a "Committee of Fifteen" to decide not only what to do with the students involved in that protest, but what the Faculty's future policy on protesters should be. It was the Committee of Fifteen that determined that, because of its provisions for student representation, the CRR should shoulder some of the old burden of the Ad Board. But the committee proved shortsighted: they did not reckon on the subsequent protests against the CRR itself.

The CRR's membership is slightly weighted in favor of the Faculty by an eight-to-six margin. It can deny students the right to legal counsel at its hearings and can admit hearsay evidence against students. CRR cases are appealed to the CRR itself, and under certain types of expulsion, students can only be re-admitted through application to the committee. Students can also be brought before the CRR for offenses vaguely defined as "obstructing the normal processes of the University."

The CRR was last convened in June, 1975 to hear the cases of six members of the DuBois Institute Student Coalition who occupied President Bok's outer office to demand an audience with him to discuss the institute's future. The six students were found guilty of violating the Resolution of Rights and Responsibilities (the CRR's charter) and had letters of reprimand placed in their University files.

Along with its boycott, most Faculty members and administrators would much rather see the CRR die as a student issue. The Committee is often viewed as merely a thorn in the administration's side that with time and a local form of "benign neglect" will fade. There is also very little sentiment among Faculty members to change the CRR, and even less to spend time at Faculty meetings discussing it.

There are signs that the Faculty will not soon be able to ignore the CRR, however. There is some sentiment among students to try to establish again this year a College-wide policy on the CRR. Student representatives on the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life seem interested in having CHUL discuss it. And the students who last year drafted a series of CRR reform proposals are ready to ask Dean Rosovsky to have the Faculty consider them.

BUT THERE STILL remains the questions of the CRR boycott, and particularly the recent freshman vote. Even for those who agree with the basic premise of the CRR--that political demonstrators should be disciplined--it seems delaying nominating students for the CRR until after the Faculty votes on the reform proposals would be the most rational course. In the past, the Faculty has had no incentive other than the boycott to consider the reform or abolition of the CRR as a serious issue, and ending the boycott would erase even that bargaining point.

For those who object in principle to the CRR and who seek its abolition, the end of the boycott would be a perhaps irreparable defeat. Until the CRR issue is resolved this year, however, its opponents should rest assured that the baton has been passed, however weakly.