I take an old-fashioned view of these things. Of course it's appropriate for students to express their views and people may decide to do more which might lead to arrest. But any time you do this you are taking personal responsibility for your actions. If they remain anonymous, you can't honor their opinions.

--Dean of the College John B Fox Jr '59, after the May 2 blockade of a South African diplomat in Lowell House.

In every case for which the Committee has held hearings in the academic year 1971-72, except that of the April 20-26 occupation of Massachusetts Hall, the only persons charged and disciplined have been leaders of the student radical left...In each of these cases we believe that the complainants brought charges against all of the demonstrators whom they could identify with certainly, but the University administrators have not used the means at their disposal to make as many identifications as possible, and the consequence is that only those whose faces are well known have been charged.

--Dissent from a Committee on Rights and Responsibilities report for the academic year 1971-72.

STUDENTS MUST BE HELD responsible for their actions. Free speech at the University must be preserved. University business must not be disrupted.

These are the clarion calls of administrators and Faculty members again offering up the Committee on Rights Responsibilities (CRR) to hand down justice to the unwashed student masses.

They have sugar coated it, spoken of a new era, apologized for it, offered incentives anything to make the student body believes in a body that is as absurd as it is odious.

A quick glance through the CRR's history reveals tales of gross incompetence and paranoia: a freshman suspended after she was misidentified in a photograph of a demonstration, a student disciplined even though he never received notification of his hearing, action taken against five students because the University did not bother to identify the other 30 to 40 involved.

The CRR was convened in the late 60s during a time when the existence of the University was being threatened and it was endowed with military tribunal like powers, almost all of which survive today.

Because the committee has not made a decision in 10 years, because its procedures are so vague, and because its membership changes every year, members of the community have no reason to trust the body or feel safe placing their Harvard careers it its hands.

All of these arguments have been made, in House Committees and in The Crimson, but they do not get at the foot of the CRR problem: the committee has neither due process nor responsibility for its actions.

Unlike the Administrative Board the CRR carries no stamp of University approval. Once the CRR has been convened, no administrator or Faculty member can affect its outcome. The University can separate itself from--and deny responsibility--for the CRR's actions, even though those actions are likely similar to those that would have been handed down by the Ad Board.

UNLIKE A COURT of law, the CRR allows no right of appeal to a higher tribunal, has no established body of precedent to ensure fair punishment, may allow unsubstantiated hearsay evidence, and is used only to prosecute alleged abuses by students. Although apologists say the Ad Board is unable to handle cases involving hundreds of students, the CRR has never shown itself able to serve justice to any more than the most visible students.

The University and the Faculty have over the last decade repeatedly shown their disdain for the body. They did not use it when students closed down University Hall in 1978. They did not use it when Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger's '38 freedom of speech rights were clearly violated in 1983.

Four years after the Report on College Governance by Professor of Biology John E. Dowling '57, the College has still ignored the report's recommendation that it reconsider the function of the CRR, which it called "essentially non-functional...and...unlikely...[to] become important or significant in College affairs in the foreseeable future."