Harvard and the B.U. Five

THAT HARVARD students should appear apathetic to anti-imperialist struggles in Indochina, Latin America, and Africa comes as less than a shock. The whole country finds Spire Agnew's alleged crimes as a country executive in Maryland more titillating news than daily reports of continuing warfare abroad. But more surprising is students ignorance of political ferment in their own backyard. While Harvard steers a steady course, at least one neighboring university still simmers with tensions left over from more explosive days.

At Boston University, the first of five trials begins today of students charged with obstructing university-authorized Marine recruiting on campus last Spring. Today's defendant, Philip Ostrow, a College of Liberal Arts (CLA) senior, has been found innocent in court of violating an injunction against blockading Marine recruiters at B.U.

The administration is trying Ostrow retroactively under a disciplinary code muscled through in April by B.U. PresidentJohn Silber. The code aims to avoid such embarrassments as Ostrow's earlier acquittal and to forestall future protest over recruiting and ROTC.

B.U. witnessed three anti-recruiting demonstrations last Spring. After a blockade March I successfully deterred students from seeing a Marine recruiter, B.U. obtained an injunction against any such further interference. After the Marine recruiter was again blockaded in a demonstration on March 21, B.U. obtained contempt citations against eight students who allegedly violated the injunction.

Unfortunately for B.U., its own evidence was too thorough and incontestable. B.U. dropped charges against five of the students immediately, and produced a film which documented what had actually taken place. The film showed the court what the students already knew -- that those named in the injunction had deliberately stayed clear of the blockade. The three remaining students were subsequently acquitted, and B.U. was alerted that due process could not be trusted to block legitimate protest.

B.U.'s Faculty Senate Council on April 5 called upon Silber to establish "an interim system for the hearing and determination...of charges of alleged misconduct against students and members of the faculty of the university." The Council's resolution requested an "alternative to exclusive reliance upon injunctive or relief from the courts or police intervention." Second-rate Westerns used to call this "taking the law into your own hands." Roughly translated: Liberal courts are not always effective for social control.

It took a Silber-appointed committee only 12 days to produce a code that would make Chiang Kai-Shek or Nguyen Van Thieu green with envy. Silber appointed the drafting committee. Silber will appoint the hearing examiner. Silber will appoint the committee which, in turn, has power to appoint the judicial committees, or panels of jurors. Of course, defendants will be entitled to appeal the jury's decision. The appeal will be heard by "the president of the University or a party or review body designated by him." On April 25, as B.U. classes were ending, the students of B.U. got the administration's message: From now on, in matters of discipline, what Silber wants, Silber gets.

The Marine recruiter revisited the campus May 2. Although the leadership of a university sought "an alternative to...police intervention," B.U.'s administration, in anticipation of trouble, asked for tactical police in full riot gear to await the demonstrators.

One student on May 2 did try to circumvent the blockade and see the Marine recruiter. Gene Felner, a B.U. student, says that as police cleared the way for this potential recruiter they accidentally drove one woman on the blockade into the building. When students crowded around to find out what had happened to the woman, the police began driving off demonstrators, arresting 12 in the chaotic process.

Charges were dropped against seven of the arrested students. In the remaining five cases, the court continued each person's sentence for one year. A continuance is equivalent to no finding of either guilt or innocence; the defendant goes unprosecuted unless new charges are brought during the period of the continuance. Then, the defendant may be tried for both the old and new charges.

John H. Burkett, director of B.U.'s Student Academic Report Services, wrote in August to Ostrow, to Becky Chestin, another student, and to four of the students whose sentences were continued in May. He informed each student, without specific charges: "You do not meet the criteria for continuation as a student at Boston University."

Over the next five weeks, all six students received revised letters which said that they were, in fact, not expelled but were to be tried on specific charges under the new code. Becky Chestin informed the administration that she was withdrawing from B.U. The other five students are now awaiting trial.

Is it so important to the University to get rid of these five students? Hardly. But it is important to intimate activists so that the return of B.U. ROTC will provoke no organized protest. Nothing is so frightening as the successful exercise of arbitrary power. Even an overwhelming CLA faculty vote last month "insisting" that the hearings be halted has failed to deter the administration in prosecuting the five students.

More frightening, the code consolidates the B.U. president's dictatorial relation to the B.U. faculty. Virtually the same heavy-handed disciplinary provisions apply to faculty as to students. A faculty member may be temporarily suspended for the sake of his "physical and emotional well-being." If B.U.'s Chief Security Officer decided that the energy which Howard Zinn, for example, devotes to protecting students' civil liberties endangers his "emotional well-being," who is to prevent the administration from suspending B.U.'s most vocal and articulate radical critic?

Silber's handling of the code -- like his secret poll on ROTC after school ended last Spring -- reveals a president-faculty relationship totally alien to the experience of Harvard. Harvard's Faculty is the President's most prestigious and politically most significant constituency. Had Nathan Pusey not crossed the Faculty on ROTC in 1969, Derek Bok might now still be dean of the Law School.

And it is their president's relation to faculty that helps explain the difference between the political climates of B.U. and Harvard. Because Harvard's relatively cohesive liberal Faculty wants the "academic freedom" to do research, including research for the Defense Department, they have voluntarily withdrawn their endorsement of the University's most glaring and provocative pro-military activities: ROTC and recruiting. The Faculty, after all, hardly needs ROTC. The protests are a nuisance they are happy to do without.

But because B.U.'s faculty lacks the power and cohesiveness necessary to determine the fate of a B.U. president, the president -- with a discipline code -- can retain both defense contract research and the less genteel forms of military support. Silber, with control over B.U.'s purse strings, does not need the faculty to legitimize his position. But although Bok now seems to believe that the protest over ROTC would not threaten the Faculty's research, only the Faculty could bring Harvard ROTC back.

Harvard's Faculty has offered students relatively great individual freedom in return for the right to continue, in labs and libraries, Defense Department, as well as other academic, work. B.U. students are now threatened, but at least B.U. radicals know their enemies. That is the contradiction which Harvard students face and which the B.U. Five illustrate. For the sake of a radical political campaign, a Faculty discussion on ROTC or recruiting would be provocative. But for the sake of students' civil liberties, all students should hope that the balance of power -- particularly diciplinary power -- makes no sudden shifts towards the Presidential office.