verbal
warning was
issued,
and the
presumption was that a recurrence
would probably result in severance—
ouster, usually for a year, with the right
to
apply
for
readmission—of
any
demonstrators.
Now the question of punishment was
alive again. and it reverted to the col-
lege’s Administrative Board, which
handles all major student disciplinary
and academic problems. The Board,
composed of the college’s deans, a few
faculty members, and senior tutors for
the residential Houses (where most of
the three upper classes live), faced
incredibly complex situation.
i
First, it had to resolve substantive
Frederick Leavitt, a recruiter from the
Dow Chemical Co.
issues. Liberal arts colleges stand as the
guardian of free speech and dissent.
They abhor punishing political protest
fiable, was it at least pardonable? After
all, many of the nondemonstrators
claimed to share the demonstrators’
hatred for the war.
The debate grew deadly serious. It
became a passionate, emotional issue,
as if Harvard, in those 6 days, were
except when the protest of some has
impaired the rights of others. Had that
line really been crossed in the Dow
demonstration, and, if so, how grave
was the transgression?
Second, the Board was confronted
with a baffling procedural problem.
When the deans had demanded stu-
goingto settle all the moral and political
problems of the war. At the Crimson,
the coliege’s daily newspaper, one of the
most acrimonious editorial debates in
dent
years resulted
a periodic practice—running
than 400 cards were ultimately turned
in. Who had actuaily participated, and
a minority. One senior faculty member prepared to resign and had to be
and portrayed their action as a funda-
ing to
in the paper’s
revert-
two sets of editorials, a majority and
persuaded by a colleague to wait until
the college had decided on the severity
of disciplinary action (in the end, he
stayed). Student organizations of all
beliefs and functions passed resolutions,
and faculty members pennedletters to
their favorite deans. On a question of
fundamental morality, the name of the
game was stand-up-and-be-counted.
The heart of the college’s problem,
and the point to which much of the
debate was directed, was discipline. The
year before, a similar incident had occurred at Harvard when Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara had been
trapped for a few minutes by angryanti-
war demonstrators whoinsisted that he
publicly defend government policy (the
only sessions scheduled for McNamara
at Harvard were semiprivate affairs).
After that incident, no one was punished;
the
Harvard
administration,
which likes to be tolerant, flexible, and
fair, avoided action on the groundsthat
this type of protest, “intolerable” as it
was, represented a first for the college,
and the students had no way of know-
ing what reaction to expect. A stern
1290
identification
demonstrators,
cards
cards came
from
the
not
only
from those at the sit-in itself but from
those in sympathy with the sit-in. More
who was to be punished? Students
pleaded for “collective responsibility”
mental
moral
commitment
which
deserved equal treatment for all. To
During the crisis: Confronting the demonstrators, left to right, Fred L. Glimp, Dean
of the College, and J. P. Elder, Dean of
the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
poses, amounted to a very sharp warning. (Some of the traditional “teeth”
of the penalty were deliberately drawn;
no one placed on probation was to have
his scholarship reviewed, nor was any-
one already on probation to face automatic severance.) What happened in
those 5 days demonstrated why Harvard is different from Berkeley.
The Administrative Board’s shift was
real enough, but not so sharp as it
seemed. Some students suspected that
the Board’s change of heart represented
a shrewd strategy: first act inflexible
and frighten the students; then soften
up and win their silent and grudging
move), the piles of cards represented a
gratitude. Events probably tended to
have that effect, but the script was not
written in advance.
The Board was never as vindicative
as it sounded. Most of the Thursday
found and paralyze the Administrative
confusion. Specifically, the Board, on
The Board first met the day after the
demonstration, on Thursday, and its
to divide the stacks of identification
many faculty members and adminis-
trators
(as
shrewder
well
as
to some
of the
students who planned the
sophisticated tactic designed to conBoard. It almost did.
first instinct, reflected by stories in the
Crimson, was to act tough. Some students, it was reported, would probably
be severed. This prospect raised the
college’s internal debate to a new feverish level—especially on the part of the
demonstrators’ partisans, both student
and faculty.
meeting was spent bringing order out of
the basis of visual identification, decided
cards
into
three
groups—individuals
who had actually been seen blocking
the door to the room where Leavitt was
trapped, those who had been seen at,
but not taking part in, the demonstra-
tion, and those who had simply handed
in their cards. There was no binding
discussion of punishment. On the Board
there
were
those
who believed
that
when the
severance was inevitable, if not desir-
and final time and presented its recommendations for punishment to the
faculty, its views had apparently moderated, No one was to be suspended;
74 demonstrators were to be placed on
probation—a punishment which sounds
harsh but which, for all practical pur-
that severance was too stiff a penalty.
However,
5 days later,
Administrative Board met for a third
able, and those whofelt, even this early,
The Crimson’s readers received an impression of greater rigidity for two reasons. First, Dean Glimp, who chairs the
Board, felt initially that severance was
inevitable, and the Crimtson reporters
naturally
lent
weight
to
the
dean’s
SCIENCE, VOL. 158