CRR Suspends 7 Students For Obstructive Picketing

The Committee on Rights and Responsibilities this weekend fired seven students until February 1971 for participating in the May 11 obstructive picketing of University Hall.

The committee placed another ten students under suspended requirements to withdraw. These students will have to leave Harvard in the event of further misconduct. The CRR also "warned" 19 students, sent letters of Admonition to three, and took no action against seven.

The committee decided that students do not have to obstruct individuals or even to be present in picket lines during particular obstructions in order to be punished for obstructive picketing.

The CRR has now punished 54 students for various disturbances this spring.

In addition, Dean May filed charges

May Adds 26 Charges
with the CRR last Friday against 20 more students for picketing on May 11, May also charged six students for temporarily obstructing CRR members who attempted to enter Holyoke Center May 16 to disrupt hearings on the Center for International Affairs Visiting Committee disruptions April 9.

The University will soon indict one more student for destroying photographs and documents at one of those hearings, May said yesterday.

The CRR will act on the most recent charges this week along with 21 other cases:

nineteen relating to the May 11 picket line;

two in connection with the breaking of a University Hall door panel May 44 by members of the SDS Radical Arts Troupe.

The rights committee will probably announce all 48 remaining decisions before the Faculty meets to grant degrees on June 8, James Q. Wilson, chairman of the CRR, said last night.

Prosecution

University officials are still considering legal actions against non-students who participated in these disturbances. Archibald Cox '34. University spokesman, said yesterday.

Charges may also be lodged, Cox said, against non-students who harassed L. Gard Wiggins. administrative vice president of the University, as Wiggins, surrounded by campus policemen, slowly made his way through a crowd of 200 students into University Hall shortly after noon on May 7.

University spokesmen announced late last week that officials would not file charges against students who participated in the obstruction of Wiggins because "it was not possible to link individuals with specific misconduct."

The CRR, in a three-page statement detailing its decisions on the May 11 picketing, stated that "Those who participated in [the picketing] must bear some responsibility for impeding the freedom of others even at those times when persons were unwilling to test the barricade."

But "those who actively and directly blocked particular individuals from entering buildings made their intentions unmistakable," the statement continued. These students must bear "a heavier responsibility," the CRR statement said.

The statement also said that certain students charged with both the obstructive picketing and the CFIA disruption were not informed of their punishmentsfor the earlier CFIA incident until after May 11. The decisions in these cases, therefore, were "somewhat more lenlent" than would usually be the case with students having prior disciplinary records.

The punishments were meted out as follows:

seven requirements to withdraw until February 1971, to students with prior disciplinary infractions who "personally blocked" officials. These students can be readmitted only by majority vote of the committee.

If readmitted, they will be placed under suspended requirements to withdraw for the remainder of their stay at Harvard. Any further misconduct will activate the requirement to leave for one more term.

seven suspended requirements to withdraw for one or two terms, to students with no prior record who were "personally involved in denying access to the building (by, or example, standing together on the steps at the time an officer sought passage up those steps)."

Any misconduct during the remainder of their Harvard careers will result in their being required to leave the University.

three suspended requirements to withdraw for one term, to picketers with a prior record who did not participate in particular obstructions. They must remain under this sanction for one year.

nineteen warnings to picketers with no prior records. Their punishments will be graver in the event of subsequent misconduct.

three admonitions to students with no prior records "whose participation in the obstruction was brief and marginal. or was marked by other mitigating circumstances,"

five dismissals of charges for lack of sufficient evidence.

two withdrawals of charges by the complainant, Dean May.