Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 who heads the group investigating the CRR won't speculate on that group's likely recommendations. But individuals close to the CRR review confide that regardless of the CRR's value, it will certainly be changed in some way.

"Nowhere will you find guidelines for running the body," says Anthony A. Ball '86, who was charged in connection with both divestment protests last spring.

"[The CRR's] ignorance of its own rules bordered on comedy," states an Undergraduate Council report released in March.

John N. Ross '87, who was brought before the CRR for his involvement in the Lowell House blockage says the board has carte blanche to write its own rules whenever it chooses. "Legally, if the University wanted to, it could enpower [Dean] Epps to hear all cases and decide them," he adds.

"I don't know where that came from," Warren D. Goldfarb '69, a member of last year's CRR, says about the ability of the CRR to rewrite its rules arbitrarily. "We are bound by law to follow our procedures."

According to John R. Marquand, secretary to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the University would be liable to legal action if the CRR arbitrarily changed its procedures.

Asked to explain what could motivate students to hurl such a charge against the CRR, Professor of Philosophy Warren D. Goldfarb '69 says "bad memory."

Goldfarb, who came to Harvard as an undergraduate in 1965 and earned his Ph.D 10 years later, served on last year's CRR. He says today's students don't understand the tensions that rocked the campus when he studied here, and that the 15-year-old student boycott of the group has prevented actual knowledge of the CRR from influencing their views.

The legislation governing the CRR calls for six student representatives in addition to seven faculty members, one of whom is a non-voting chairman. Because students have refused to participate, however, the CRR adjudicates cases without student members. No student has sat on a CRR which heard a case in more than 15 years.

CRR members point to that boycott--and a lack of familiarity with the CRR which it has caused--as a source of student dissatisfaction.

Doomed From the Start

One member of the administration, former Dean of the College John B. Fox '59, says the current CRR is "nonviable." But Fox calls the body's due process procedures "entirely appropriate," and says, "students could appear before the CRR confident that their rights would be protected."

Fox, currently Administrative dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, says students are too strongly opposed to the CRR to allow the group to continue.

CRR reviewers say privately that the same small group of detractors have been present at public forums on the body or at other functions, but, according to the reviewers, student opposition has become so habitual that it probably can't be countered. They act as if it is time to stop struggling against student opinion and to try something different.

"Students feel if all the other students have said its a bad thing, its probably a bad thing," says Hugh McGuire '85, an observer of last year's proceedings.

"I don't have anything to do with [the CRR] and won't as long as it maintains connections with its history," explains one of those charged last year, Damon A. Silvers '86. "As long as the CRR remains the CRR, I cannot cope with it," continues Silvers, charging it "created a situation in the early years where people were afraid to politically protest."

"The problem is that it has been a witch-hunting body that has gone after people for political beliefs," says Thomas N. Crean '86, a Claverly Hall resident who was found guilty of misconduct for his participation in the Lowell House blockade. "The students who fought against the Vietnam war and against apartheid were right. The University has no right to go after them."

Asked what changes he would like to see come from the faculty's investigation of the CRR, Friedell responds: "The perception of how it works from the past is the thing the CRR suffers from. To tell you the truth, one of the things you could do for the CRR is change its name."