To Each a CRR

The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education has urged that American universities adopt statements of rights and responsibilities that would pertain equally to students, faculty, administrators and trustees.

In a report released Saturday, the commission said, in part, "Too often in the past, faculty have set rules for the students but not for themselves; or trustees have set rules for the faculty but not for themselves. We believe the time is appropriate for certain rights and responsibilities to be applied to all members of a campus."

The Carnegie Commission drew a sharp distinction between campus dissent and disruption, saying that disruption "must be condemned and met properly by the efforts of the campus and, when necessary, by application of the general law."

Donald G. Anderson, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Mathematics and current chairman of the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR), said he was dubious about the feasibility of controlling trustees.

"I don't see that there can be any mechanism for disciplining trustees, nor has there been any cause to," Anderson said yesterday. He said he felt that the spirit of the Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities presently includes members of the faculty. Nevertheless, Anderson agreed that a method of enforcing the paragraphs relevent to faculty has not yet been developed.

Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of the History of Science and a leading advocate of controls on the faculty, was enthusiastic about the commission's re-port and said, "I think it's a very just conclusion, in that it reflects the changing nature of American universities, where decisions and responsibilities are being dispersed more equally among students and administrators."

Mendelsohn hoped that the report would have an effect on Harvard and believed that the failure of students to take the CRR seriously is the result of the faculty's own-failure to adopt parallel measures for itself last year.