Behind Closed Doors

A lot of girls were surprised and annoyed Thursday when Dean Small walked out of the Student Council's open meeting to air the Labenow case. Miss Small said that a closed-door session with the Council "would prove more fruitful"; evidently she was right, since the Council released a statement after the session that "no individual student right have been violated."

What went on at the closed meeting? Miss Small knows; the Student Council knows; neither of them is telling. Radcliffe's body and the CRIMSON can only guess what arguments the administration presented. The only clues on the record are Miss Small's few words at the open meeting:

Dean Small explained that "reporting for the CRIMSON as well as the Boston newspapers is a permission granted by the College." She defended the policy with this parallel: "White House reporters are responsible to the White House . . . and if they weren't, they wouldn't be reporters for long." Miss Small would be interested to meet Lawrence Todd and Robert Hall, who have covered White House press conferences for many years. As correspondent for Russia's Tass News Agency, Mr. Todd writes for Pravda and Izvestia; Mr. Hall covers for the Daily Worker. Neither of these reporters, we would suggest, is responsible to the White House.

"What we are concerned with," said Miss Small, "is a misrepresentation of facts as far as they are concerned with Radcliffe policy." The next day, Council member Ann Roberts '51 wrote in the Radcliffe News that two false stories had spurred Radcliffe's action. One of these was on the Radcliffe Graduate Center, which the News called "an erroneous story which received widespread publicity . . . The Administration was misrepresented on matters of important administration policy." Then, on questioning from the CRIMSON, two days after the secret meeting, Miss Roberts, Dean Small, and Dean Cronkhite admitted that the Graduate Center story was completely correct.

Dean Small charged that Miss Labenow had broken release dates. This is a serious accusation in the newspaper business. Both Miss Labenow and the CRIMSON challenged Dean Small to cite an example; Miss Small replied that she couldn't, but again asserted, "She did break them." After the meeting, Joan Projansky told the CRIMSON, "Since I have been Publicity Director, Debby has not violated release dates." The next morning, in a private telephone call, Miss Projansky added: "Miss Small doesn't understand the meaning of 'breaking a release.' What she meant was that Debby printed a story before Radcliffe would have wanted it printed."

According to its release, the Student Council came to its decision "after having reviewed the facts with the Radcliffe Administration." Were these the kind of "facts" that Council reviewed? If they were, we wish someone were at the meeting to refute them. But the CRIMSON, the Boston press, and Miss Labenow were all barred. Nor will Radcliffe tell them what was said.

It seems likely that Radcliffe brought in personal reasons against Miss Labenow, and that the Council naturally doesn't want to reveal them. Is this the basis for Radcliffe's discipline? If it is, why wasn't Miss Labenow placed on regular probation? Why was she told just to quit the CRIMSON and the Press Board?

The CRIMSON has faith in Radcliffc Council; it knows that Council is an intelligent and honest body. It would be happy to put its case in Council's hands. But no group can be expected to reach a fair decision after listening to one side of the story for three hours in a closed-door hush-hush kangaroo-court trial.