But for the most part Berlow did not spend much time thinking about the CRR, because its goal--the preservation of correct and respectful behavior--seemed irrelevant in light of events in the world outside. "The war," he concluded then and concludes now, "was a hell of a lot more important than behaving in a gentlemanly manner."

Harvard v. Mark Y. Liberman '69

Mark Y. Liberman '69 skipped his scheduled hearing before the Committee of Fifteen. It did not strike him as a particularly significant event to attend, he says; he had rallies to organize, leaflets to distribute. But mostly, he did not believe that his presence would make any difference in Meeting Room K.

From the 'looks of the committee's formal letter listing his charges--"the Bill of Particulars," Liberman calls it now--it appeared to him that the committee had already found him guilty. A few weeks later it did, formally, and Liberman was forced to leave Harvard. Shortly after, he was drafted and on his way to Vietnam.

Other than the invitation to attend his hearing, Liberman knew nothing of the status of his case until June 1969, when the decision was announced at a press conference. He then received a letter, dismissing him and advising him not to show his face around campus. So the Group I, National Science Foundation Scholarship winner headed off for the war.

When he returned, MIT offered to honor his scholarship and allow Liberman to enroll in a doctoral program in linguistics, although he lacked an undergraduate degree. He received his Ph.D. there and now works in Bell Laboratories in Chatham, New Jersey.

To Liberman, the details of the offenses the committee charged him with seemed trivial. "The issue to all of us wasn't that we had done it, but whether it was right. And they weren't prepared to argue that with us," he says.

Speaking in favor of continuing the boycott, Liberman describes placing students on the CRR as a way of "getting students to do it to themselves." The only students who he can imagine wanting to sit on the CRR, he says, are those interested "in the kind of experience they can put on their resume."

While working on his dissertation at MIT, Liberman ventured into the Yard one quiet fall day in 1972, and met a friend for lunch in the Dudley House cafeteria in Lehman Hall, once the center for many SDS sessions.

In the middle of a sandwich, Liberman looked up to see Thomas Crooks, master of Dudley House, peering over at him. Crooks took him aside and politely reminded him that the University ruling prevented him "from ever setting foot on University property again." (Crooks says he does not remember telling any students to leave, and calls such statements "silly.")

Now Liberman has a reputation in linguistics, and University scholars have unknowingly invited him several times to speak at linguistics conferences on the Harvard campus. He has accepted all such speaking engagements, and so far, he says, "they have not called in the University patrol."

Harvard v. "Janet Wheeler '70"

Unlike most students disciplined by CRR, Janet Wheeler '70 decided to show up for her first hearing. But after one round in Meeting Room K, she decided she had had enough. "It was a fairly unpleasant and frightening experience," she says today. After she attended several rallies and received five summonses to come to more hearings, the committee suspended her--two days before Commencement.

Wheeler and her tutor, who was acting as her lawyer, were guided through several locked doors before entering the pent-house board room of CRR. The proceedings that followed, she says, "confirmed what everybody else had been saying about CRR--that it was a kangaroo court." She sat before a panel of committee members, the table between them covered with photographs.

"You know that Arlo Guthrie song--'Eight-by-ten glossies with circles and arrows'?" she asks. "Well, that is exactly what is was like." In the photographs she saw, almost everyone was identified by name. But only a few faces were circled, and these people, she recalls, were the ones who eventually received the stiffest penalties. Wheeler also remembers asking the committee why, if it had identified almost 400 protesters, it had only disciplined 50. No response.