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Discipline Reform Plan Passes

After less than 30 minutes of one-sided discussion, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences yesterday approved without dissent a plan to replace the controversial Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR) with a new disciplinary body.

This final approval comes more than a year and a half after various student and faculty bodies began drafting the proposal to abolish the 17-year-old CRR and establish the Student-Faculty Judicial Board.

The Faculty executive steering committee last month approved the proposal, and the Undergraduate Council also endorsed the new disciplinary body, which will hear cases "on which there is no clear precedent or consensus in the community about the impermissibility of the actions or the appropriate response."

At the Faculty meeting yesterday, six people spoke in favor of the new body, and no one spoke in opposition. After the vote, in which not a single "nay" was heard, President Bok said, "I would think this was some routine correction to the minutes."

The closest thing to an objection was two "suggestions" made by Graduate Student Council President Gregory D. Crowe '86. Crowe said the Judicial Board should handle cases involving faculty, administrators, and staff, as well as disciplinary infractions by students.

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"The overriding sentiment among graduate students is that the body should hold jurisdiction over the entire Harvard community," Crowe said, adding the University has no justification to "single out students."

Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57, who has been the main force behind the proposal, said after the meeting that he would be "very surprised" if the Faculty would ever approve a disciplinary body with jurisdiction over both students and faculty.

Crowe also suggested a procedural change allowing students to request term-time hearings to avoid dragging proceedings into the summer, as was the case in 1985, when the CRR last met.

But when asked by Bok if these ideas were offered as amendments Crowe said they were merely suggestions. "The majority of graduate students feel this proposal is an improvement over the CRR."

Students have almost continuously boycotted the CRR, which the Faculty created in 1970 to hear infractions of its Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities (RRR). When the CRR was convened in the spring of 1985, after lying dormant for 10 years, students renewed their calls for disciplinary reform.

Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence, who asked Jewett in the fall of 1985 to draft a plan for a new disciplinary body, urged its passage at yesterday's meeting.

"It is the result of a long, careful, thoughtful process that has involved faculty, students, and administrators," he said.

Spence and others who supported the plan at the Faculty meeting said the new body was needed to lend the disciplinary system legitimacy in the eyes of students.

"Students will have a significant role" in determining rules and standards. Spence said.

"It will probably have greater legitimacy and support, at least among students, than does the CRR," said Jewett.

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