Discipline Committee Separates 3 Students For Harassing Official

The Committee on Rights and Responsibilities has separated three students for harassing Sargent Kennedy, secretary of the Corporation, on May 26. The three-none of whom had prior disciplinary records-will be barred from the University for at least a year and cannot return without a majority vote of the Faculty.

The incident occurred after an SDS demonstration protesting Harvard's inaction following the drowning of two children in "Muddy Pond," a University-owned marsh in Jamaica Plain. Harvard has since agreed to fill in the pond. Kennedy, however, has no administrative connection with the matter.

Subsequent to the incident, one of the students-Joseph Rothchild '71-was notified that he had received a suspended requirement to withdraw for taking part in the disruption of the March 26 "Counter Teach-In" As a result, he will be under "suspended suspension" for the next two years of his Harvard career should he be allowed to return to the University.

The three students-none of whom are named in the CRR statement released yesterday-were among a group of 10 or 12 persons who followed Kennedy from Holyoke Center to the Faculty Club over a ten-minute period, chanting "murderer" and shouting at him through a bullhorn. Kennedybrought charges against the three earlier this month.

"The actions of the group constitute intense personal harassment of Mr. Kennedy which has been unequivocally declared unacceptable," the CRR statement says. "No amount of moral or political indignation over an undoubted tragedy can change this fact."

The issue of "intense personal harassment" has arisen only once before, in the cases of four white students who chanted at Dean May during the occupation of University Hall by the Organization for Black Unity in December 1969. At the time, May was reading a warning to the blacks in the Hall instructing them to leave or face suspension and an injunction.

The CRR subsequently dismissed the four charges on the grounds that such harassment was not expressly forbidden by the Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities. The committee stated at the same time, however, that disciplinary action could follow any recurrence.

"The committee wishes to make clear the gravity with which it views in stances of personal harassment of this sort," yesterday's CRR statement said. "[We] felt that we should be lenient on this first occasion .... In future, there can be no doubt that such actions are prohibited and will be dealt with severely."

But separation is the third harshest penalty in the entire range of University punishments, exceeded in severity only by dismissal, which requires a two-thirds Faculty vote for readmission, and expulsion, which forbids the student to return and expunges him from University records. Separation is only rarely invoked, and it has not been used since the aftermath of the painters' helpers protest in late 1969.

Two of the students separated by the CRR did not attend their hearings. The third had apparently left Cambridge before notification of the charge was mailed to him, and did not discover that he had been summoned until after his hearing took place.

After reaching its decision, the committee was told by the student's parents that the student had not been notified of the hearing until after the hearing had taken place. Nevertheless, the committee decided not to withhold the decision and hold a new hearing; it placed the student under separation pending an appeal.

Donald G. M. Anderson, chairman of the CRR. explained yesterday that the three decisions had to be made speedily in order to precede the Faculty's degree-granting meeting, which took place Monday night. "The decision stands until we have reason to believe it should be reconsidered," he said.

Anderson added, however, that he was "quite confident that the committee would be sympathetic" to an appeal by the student.