Berg became politicized at another campus--he joined his first political demonstration in 1963 at the University of Wisconsin. He came to Harvard a year later and joined SDS in 1967.

By the time of the University Hall bust, he recalls, he knew he did not want to give any legitimacy to the Committee of Fifteen's proceedings by attending his own hearing. Besides disapproving of the particular practices of the committee, Berg felt that its purpose--to determine who was guilty and who wasn't--showed that University administrators had missed the whole point of the collective political action on campus in those years.

"In the midst of this whole struggle against ROTC, Harvard expansion, the war," he says, "the CRR was trying to decide which individuals merited a suspension, which a 'suspended suspension.' We saw these hearings as an attempt to get bogged down on the particulars of whether an account was factual or not," he explains. "The CRR was not only seen then as repressive, but as an attempt to change the focus."

Hearing that undergraduates are considering breaking the boycott of CRR, Berg shakes his head sadly. Just that day at Suffolk University in Boston, where Berg teaches, the faculty had voted to establish ROTC on campus, despite vociferous dissent from him and a few others. "There's a change going on," he says.

If face to face with Harvard undergraduates today who want to break the boycott, Berg says he would argue, "If you are a part of it, you are making the system work," no matter what intentions the students may have for reform.

"I don't see what student participation in a disciplinary body is supposed to accomplish, what end it serves," he adds. The CRR "began with the assumption that protest was wrong and people should be punished," and that, Berg concludes, is something no well-meaning student representative could eradicate.

Harvard v. Lowry Hemphill '72

Lowry Hemphill '72 helped escort the deans out of University Hall that April and her face appeared in the photographs taken on the building's steps. But unlike the older students involved in removing the deans--students with a record of prominence and leadership in SDS--Hemphill was "an unknown freshman," and she believes that had something to do with her comparatively light sentence. The Committee of Fifteen handed her a "warning," then dismissed three students for the same wrongdoing.

Hemphill continued to participate in demonstrations after the University Hall occupation, and in 1970 she received a letter from the CRR asking her to come to a hearing. "We weren't told the charges against us beforehand," Hemphill recalls. "We were just told the date of the hearing."

A resident tutor went to Hemphill's hearing--she was staying away from the CRR with everyone else at this point--and he told her later that the CRR had charged her with participating in a rally she never attended. The tutor told the committee members, who were sitting around a table covered with photographs and long lists of names, that the picture of a woman which they had identifed as Hemphill was in fact someone else. But, her tutor told her, "they didn't seem interested."

The CRR gave her a "suspended suspension," but did not notify her until a week later. That day the picket wound around Holyoke Center, where the hearing was taking place. "At that point, so many people were on suspended suspension that everyone had paper bags with Dean May's face on them over their heads," Hemphill recalls. She joined the picket, but failed to bring proper masquerade attire. Someone spotted her and notified CRR, in session on the tenth floor. It decided on the spot, Hemphill's tutor later told her, to knock her penalty up one notch from "suspended suspension" to "suspension."

Her suspension had "a chilling effect" in Whitman Hall, where she was living that year, she says: "Twelve or fifteen people in my dorm got letters of warning; I got thrown out. So I was an object lesson to them. It was saying to all the other people, if you take the next step, this is what will happen to you."

When it came time for Hemphill to apply for readmission, the CRR notified her that she must first appear before the body, apologize and promise "good behavior" in the future.

"I was still really angry at the whole thing. And I just felt that I couldn't say I was sorry for things I didn't do and I couldn't promise not to do anything. The war was still going on. People like me were still protesting at campuses all over," she says.

So Hemphill finished her undergraduate program at the University of Connecticut, then returned to Harvard's Graduate School of Education, where she is a second-year student. Although she was permitted to reenter the University system, there remains a visible reminder of her transgression--in large block letters taking up a good third of the transcript sheet are stamped the words, "Required to withdraw."