At Berkeley in the Sixties: The Making of an Activist

42 The Heyman Committee Report

42 The Heyman Committee Report On Friday, November 13th, the Academic Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Suspensions, otherwise known as the Heyman Committee, released its report. After thirty-¤ve hours of hearings and deliberations, the ¤ve faculty members recommended that six of the eight suspended students be reinstated as of the date of their suspension with the words “inde¤nite suspension” expunged from their records. They recommended six-week suspensions for Art and Mario, as leaders of the demonstrations, beginning on September 30th and ending on November 16th. The report criticized the administration for its “unusual” procedure of inde¤nitely suspending students before any hearings were held. Its overall tone was sympathetic to the students.1 The FSM was elated. The administration was not. Chancellor Strong was furious. First, the Heyman Committee stepped on his toes when its chairman sent the report to the Academic Senate rather than to him. He saw this as a slight to his authority as chief campus of¤cer. After an angry exchange of memos and phone calls, Heyman retreated and confessed “that our report dated November 12 should have been delivered to the administration with copies to the Academic Senate, Berkeley division.” Second, Strong did not like the critical attitude of the Heyman report or what he saw as the paltry punishment of students for knowingly and deliberately violating university regulations. On November 18th he wrote President Kerr that accepting the committee’s recommendations would be seen as “showing weakness . . . in the face of deliberate violations.”2 Strong was not alone in his dismay. Dean Arleigh Williams had been chief witness for the “prosecution,” a role he played without enthusiasm. Williams had not favored the administrative actions which led to the suspensions, but he was the dean who wrote the reports and the one who was cross-examined by lawyers representing the cited students. Williams had favored leniency, but not this much.3 On the night of October 2nd, when we discussed point 4 of the pro- posed agreement, we were told that the recommendations of faculty committees about student discipline were advisory to the chancellor but that he always accepted their advice. Yet once the agreement was signed and the captured car released, Strong balked. Heyman initially asked that the suspended students be reinstated pending the hearing, but Strong refused to do so. He told Heyman that the Board of Regents had asked that he and Kerr confer with them before acting on any recommendations of the student conduct committee. They would report to the Regents, who would make the ¤nal decision about the academic fate of the eight. Strong repeatedly said, privately and publicly, that the Heyman Committee was only concerned with violations by students through September 30th and that for “serious misconduct since that date . . . regular disciplinary procedures will prevail.” Nonetheless, most of us, and probably most of the faculty as well, thought that the Regents’ meeting on November 20th would be the ¤nal word on discipline for the fall. After all, the rules were about to change. Why prosecute students under the old rules for conduct not in violation of the new?4 The FSM prepared for the Regents’ meeting by putting up tables in still-forbidden space near Sproul Hall steps every day. The administration did nothing. Numerous groups, on and off campus, proclaimed their support of the FSM’s goals, if not its methods. Mail to the Regents ran in favor of the FSM’s goals. Charlie Powell, president of the ASUC, formed a ¤ve-man committee to review the recommendations of the SCCPA. It suggested several “improvements” very much like the proposals we had drafted to discuss with Kerr. Mario Savio and Michael Rossman criticized them as insuf¤cient. The law students’ association condemned the administration’s restrictions on political activity. Even CDC’s Board of Directors asked the Regents to protect “the constitutional liberty” of the students. Student approval of the demonstrators’ goals and tactics rose to 47 percent.5 200 l At Berkeley in the Sixties ...