A New Commission

ALTHOUGH THREE WEEKS AGO the Faculty Council helped quash five amendments to reform the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities, it was not able to prevent the Faculty from establishing a committee to review the Commission of Inquiry. The study was undertaken chiefly because few Faculty members envision any change in the Commission emerging from it. Another reason is that the members of the Commission were anxious to see their work reviewed.

In 1970 the Faculty established the Commission to insure that complaining students and Faculty received a fair hearing by the powers-that-be. If a student, for example, appealed an Administrative decision, the Commission was to study his case and to publish its findings. The Commission was not empowered to reverse decisions.

Unfortunately, few students even know of the Commission's existence. Rarely has the Commission been asked to consider intervening in major controversies. In at least one recent minor case, the Commission recommended that a decision be changed. John T. Dunlop, former dean of the Faculty, informed the Commission that its even making such a recommendation was out of order.

One expected outcome of the planned review--and the only result which several Faculty Council members anticipate--is that students will become more aware of the Commission's existence. But such awareness, in itself, cannot make the Commission an effective organ. The crucial questions many students want reviewed--on hirings and firings, on graduate student aid, on University investment--will not come before the Commission until its jurisdiction and powers are redefined more broadly.

The Commission can effectively serve as ombudsman only when empowered to review all Faculty and Administrative decisions. Students will justifiably condemn the Commission until the Commission can at least recommend reversing decisions, until as many students as Faculty serve on the Commission, and until it becomes the first step toward creating a sense of mutual responsibility among students and Faculty--impossible until the CRR is also reconceived.

William Paul, McKay Professor of Applied Physics, had no specific reform in mind when he urged investigating the Commission. But apparently he was urging the Faculty to reaffirm the principle of reciprocity embodied in the original Resolution on Rights and Responsibility. If those studying the Commission fail to consider restructuring it or changing its mandate, no study or publicity will make the Commission an instrument for establishing the responsible community to which the original CRR aspired.