They'll Talk, But It's Uncertain About What

The Faculty Council this week seemed to snatch defeat from the jaws of a victory for the moderate students who have been pushing since December for changes in the dormant Committee on Rights and Responsibilities.

The council agreed to meet with students next fall to discuss changing the CRR, sources said, but at the same time decided to stand fairly firmly against the idea of equal student-Faculty representation on the committee-the reform that students had been pushing for most strongly.

Sources said the council is willing to consider equal student-Faculty representation only under a new "two-tier" system, in which there would be an all-Faculty board that could overrule CRR decisions.

One source close to the council said the council "feels that responsibility for student discipline is a Faculty matter," and that equal representation would be "unfair" because it would "place the responsibility for discipline so heavily on individual students."

The council decision came in response to a resolution last month by the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life, asking for student-Faculty negotiations on the CRR.

The CHUL vote was apparently based on assurances from Dean Whitlock and Dean Rosovsky that the Faculty would be willing to consider structural changes in the CRR-statements that the students who proposed the CHUL resolution took to mean possibly changing the 7-4 Faculty-student ratio on the disciplinary committee.

It is hard to say if any recommended changes will come out of next fall's negotiations; in a Faculty that still seems to wince at the mention of the 1969 strike, discipline remains a touchy subject. It seems unlikely, however, that the new round of talks will produce a CRR that is especially palatable to students.