A--That's right.
Q--You feel that you can prevent the showing of a film that that very day a Superior Court Judge has ruled not to be obscene?
A--We did it.
Q--You did it?
A--That's right."
Later, discussing the judge's ruling that the film was not obscene, Droney remarks that Alberti was "dead wrong on the obscenity issue." But Droney is not heartless--referring on at least one occasion to Stork and Hagen as "the children," he blames Dershowitz for the entire incident. "I believe in my judgement he would put the issue before the welfare of the students," he said, explaining why he refused to meet with Dershowitz before agreeing to the arrest and the seizure of the film.
THE HARVARD ADMINISTRATION: Represented in alphabetical order by Charles Dunn, master of Quincy House, Arhie C. Epps III, dean of students, and Elizabeth Swain, senior tutor in Quincy House. The Friday the film originally was to be shown, Dunn and Swain ordered the posting of a two-sentence announcement notifying the anticipatory throngs that their lust would have to be sated elsewhere. A week later, they agreed not to stand in the way. But not Epps, who called the district attorney's office to let them know the film was on. Droney again: "apparently the Dean of Harvard told Bill Codinha he would try to prevent it...he said he thought they would not show it, and if they did, he would call Bill Codinha and inform him."
Epps explains that he only made the call as part of a "gentleman's agreement" he had struck with the DA's office in hopes of preventing the arrest of Harvard students. And within minutes of Stork and Hagen's arrival at the police station, Epps was there to help bail them out.
THE PROTESTERS: Theirs is the saddest story of the whole affair. Stork and Hagen lost a couple of dozen hours spent in court, and quite a bit of sleep. But the more than 150 protesters who marched through Quincy House courtyard that Friday night lost much more--the impact of one of the biggest protests ever organized by campus feminists was twisted and muted by the arrests. Within an hour, instead of basking in the glow of a job well done, they were feverishly preparing a one-page statement explaining that they did not condone censorship and arrests. The people in the saga who acted with the purest motives ended up in worst shape; defending themselves against the charge that they had caused the arrest of two fellow students, Quincy House feminists had no time to exploit the energy and fervor they had raised in the days before the showing.
For the record: No Harvard student lodged a formal complaint with the district attorney's office. Sources in that office reveal that at least two students called for information, and that the DA's office, without informing them that they might be setting a full-scale investigation into progress, decided to act on them as if they were formal complaints. The DA's office refused to confirm the sources' story or to reveal the names of the students who phoned for information.
* * *
The Deep Throat affair is over now, two months after the film society decided to pay off their debts--$400 worth of damage done when someone hurled beer at a Science Center movie screen--by showing a stag film. It didn't end in a burst of glory for either side. The DA's office realized they were fighting a battle they would eventually lose. They offered to settle, and the defense, unwilling to pay the emotional price of continuing the battle, accepted a technical victory that stands far short of defending the first amendment.
There will be other, similar, cases in the future. Quite possibly, should the defendants be unable to secure the services of the best constitutional lawyers Harvard Law School has to offer, they will be convicted. Quite possibly, if they aren't Harvard students, no one will pay any attention.