Students Will Propose Substitutes For CRR

A group of House Committee chairmen and representatives has almost completed drafting a proposal for two new internal disciplinary committees which would supplant the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR).

The group-which has been meeting weekly with Dean Dunlop and Dean May, and occasionally with Radcliffe President Mary I. Bunting-will release its proposal before the end of the year. Several members of the group said last night that they hope to hold a University-wide referendum on the proposal some time next fall.

May said last night that the students plan to present a "semi-final version" at a meeting in the middle of next week. He explained that he and Dunlop have met with them "in a kind of consultative capacity."

"It's their show, not ours," he said. "We've been sitting with them to give them our sense of various ideas and arguments that the Faculty might have."

Michael H. Bierman '72, a member of the Winthrop House Committee and a representative to the group, said last night that the students have agreed on some features of the proposal. They include the following:

There would be two separate committees: one for undergraduates and one for graduate students.

The hearings would be opened at the request of the student, with one condition: "It's a one-shot deal," Bierman said. "If it's disrupted, it would be closed."

Each committee would have an equal number of faculty members and student members, and the chairman would be non-voting.

The chairman would probably not be a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Instead he would be a "reasonably outside person" who would call meetings, preside over them and act as a spokesman. Bierman said that he could be a faculty member from another University faculty.

The Commission on Inquiry would be linked more closely to the new committees. It would also be changed to include four student members-three undergraduates and one graduate-and three faculty members.

Its name would be changed from the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities to the Disciplinary Committee.

The students - all of whom stressed that they did not consider themselves official representatives of their Houses - began meeting some two months ago after the Houses unanimously decided in referenda not to send student representatives to the CRR.

Shortly after the Houses finished voting, Bunting, Dunlop and May sent a letter to the House Committee chairmen in which they posed a number of questions about the students' views on the issue of discipline.

"We put the ball back over the net and said, 'What will work?' "May said last night. In the same letter. they invited the chairmen to a meeting which marked the beginning of the present group.

The first meeting had representatives from every Harvard and Radcliffe House, one member of the group said last night, but since then almost half have dropped out, leaving about a dozen active members.

The students have met by themselves in numerous meetings in which they formulated their proposals. Their meetings with Dunlop and May helped them to determine just what the Faculty might be willing to accept, one member said.

Receptive

"They were very receptive," Douglass L. Warren '72. chairman of the Kirkland House Committee and another member of the group, said last night. "They were willing to listen to about anything we said."

Bierman said that Dunlop has taken charge in most of the meetings. "Lately we've been in this bargaining kind of position, and you know, the guy does it for a living. What can you do?" he said. "But, he added, they've been pretty good."

Asked whether members of the group all agreed that such a body was needed, Bierman said: "Whether or not it's needed doesn't especially matter too much. It's there. And the Faculty is absolutely adamant that it's going to punish people. Dunlop is adamant, anyway."

'Acceptable'

"What we hope to have is something that's acceptable to both groups - students and faculty," he said.

Dunlop said yesterday afternoon that he had found the discussions "??."

"I don't think we're very far apart," he said. "We're certainly closer now than we were ten weeks ago."