Create A New Body

IT HAS BEEN a long time since Harvard has felt obliged to discipline students for political activities and even longer since the University has faced serious allegations from activists regarding violations of their civil liberties. Unfortunately, a comparison of the University's response to students' complaints and its handling of official grievances reveals an unconscionable double standard. If the University is serious about giving special protection to individual rights, it ought to dissolve both the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR) and the Commission of Inquiry (COI) and replace them with a truly autonomous judiciary board holding jurisdiction over the entire Harvard community.

University Hall's grievances against student anti-apartheid protesters are currently being considered by the CRR, a judiciary body which can independently administer the full range of University punishments--except dismissal and expulsion, which require approval from the full Faculty. But students complaining of violations of their rights had no independent authority to which they could appeal. The only formal channel for their complaints was the COI, a body whose function, according to the Handbook for Students, is to "re-direct [complaints] to the appropriate agency of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences" but which has "no power to make rulings."

The CRR is charged with enforcing the Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities, a document designed to protect the rights of all members of the University. Curiously enough, however, the Student Handbook tells us that the CRR is empowered only to "hear charges of violations of the Resolution's second and third paragraphs by students in the College or the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences."

In its 15 years of existence, the CRR has not functioned as an independent arbiter of individual freedoms. Rather, it has been called on by the administration to mete out discipline in cases in which students have been involved in coordinated political activities. Its role has been both to intimidate student activists and to deflect responsibility for punishing students away from University Hall. The COI's functions, on the other hand, are ambiguous at best. It has no authority either to levy sanctions or to demand redress. Moreover, it can do little even to investigate grievances. Perhaps the COI's role as a clearinghouse for complaints against the University is a bureaucratic convenience, but it also serves as a buffer for discontent. While the COI purports to discharge the University's responsibility to provide a channel for complaints against Harvard officials and departments, it can do nothing to insure that such complaints receive a fair and full hearing. Its impotence stands in stark contrast to the investigatory and decision-making powers of the CRR.

The problem with the current division of labor between the COI and the CRR is twofold: first, it protects the rights of some members of the community and not of others; second, it can often be invoked or restrained at the pleasure of University administrators. Establishing an independent judiciary body empowered to protect the essential rights of all members of the University remains an excellent idea. But if such a committee is to be truly impartial and independent, it must subsume the functions of both the CRR and the COI and retain its autonomy from Harvard administrators.

An independent judiciary committee should be comprised of students, faculty, and administrators, and its decisions should require the approval of the Faculty. Anyone should have the right to bring a complaint to the committee, which would decide whether or not to address it. Moreover, should the committee choose to act on a complaint, its jurisdiction ought to supersede the Administrative Board's.

There is no question that a committee so construed would protect the rights of all members of the University community more effectively than do present institutions. It would safeguard students' rights better than do both the one-sided procedures of the CRR and the secrecy of the Ad Board and would force all University members to respect all individual rights. Perhaps most important, such a committee would demonstrate that Harvard is truly more interested in building an open and free academic community than it is in preserving the status quo and silencing malcontents.