36 OBU Members Announce Refusal to Appear Today At Disciplinary Hearings

The 36 black students charged for their participation in the December 5 and 11 occupations of University Hall will not report to the hearings scheduled by the University, OBU (Organization for Black Unity) spokesmen announced Friday.

Instead, OBU has called for an open hearing 7:30 p. m., Tuesday, in Austin Court Room at the Law School.

In a press statement released Friday, OBU invited Dean May, L. Gard Wiggins, administrative vice-president of the University, and Archibald Cox, Samuel Williston Professor of Law "to represent Harvard's position" at the hearings.

May and Wiggins said last night that they had not heard of the OBU proposal and could not say whether they would be present. Cox was not available for comment.

The disciplinary hearings with the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities are scheduled to begin at 9 a. m. this morning. James Q. Wilson, chairman of the Committee, said last night that the majority of the cases will be heard by Wednesday, and that a decision on punishments could be expected some time next week.

"The rule of the Committee is that all formal hearings and deliberations be held in closed session," Wilson said. "How the Committee might respond to an invitation to discuss openly the issues involved I wouldn't predict,"

Wilson said that the hearings called by OBU could not be considered as part of the disciplinary proceedings of the University.

The 36 OBU members are charged with takeover of the building and "obstructive demonstration." Four white students have also been charged with "harassment of a dean" for attempting to shout down May when he read an announcement of temporary suspension to the blacks inside University Hall during the December 11 demonstration.

It is still undecided whether the white students will attend their hearings, one of the four said last night.

"Black students who have been served with complaints from the University and are expected to report to a series of hearings will not report to the hearings because we can not recognize the University's legitimacy in constructing the laws or the mechanism by which it seeks to enforce them," said the OBU statement read Friday by Mark D. Smith '72.

Locked Doors

"Our hearings will be open, unlike those that the University proposes," Smith continued. "The so called Committee on Rights and Responsibilities is not impartial. If it were, the summonses which students have received would not have told them that they have been already found guilty. If it were, the hearingswould not be held behind four locked doors and guarded by policemen."

"The University is clearly acting irresponsibly in trying to divide and squelch a movement which it admits opened its eyes to its own injustice," Smith said.

In another statement released Friday, Cleveland L. Sellars, a first-year student at the School of Education, announced that his trial on charges of conspiracy, inciting to riot, and riot has been set for today in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

The charges stem from the 1968 uprisings at South Carolina State College, which resulted in the deaths of four blacks in what was alleged by blacks to be murder by police-the so-called "Orangeburg Massacre."

Sellars, former secretary of SNCC, said that he was told of the new trial date last Tuesday.

"The fact that the trial has been set for Jan, 12, 1970, the same date as the trial of black students at Harvard, is no accident," Sellars said Friday. "My commitment to the effort of black students at Harvard to get the 20 per cent of black construction workers was not a secret."

Sellars' trial has been twice postponed. He is free on $20,000 bail.

"It has become apparent to me and should also be apparent to you that Harvard University is the very essence of white western civilization," Sellars said in a statement to OBU. "The present status quo will not concede to your demands until they understand that your struggle is part of a larger Pan African struggle for the liberation of the African People wherever they may be."