Universities: The Climate at Berkeley

To mutinous students at the Berkeley campus, the University of California’s board of regents last week “reconfirmed” itself as the “ultimate authority for student discipline,” and then moved in the direction of granting the major student demand.

President Clark Kerr opened the meeting in the paneled Regents’ Room of the University’s Los Angeles campus with a long report on such scholarly research as treatment for fruit canker and survival of the condor. Finally, he brought up the subjects that had summoned Governor Pat Brown from Sacramento and newsmen from all over the state. Should the 23 regents under Chairman Edward Carter accept a demand, supported by Berkeley students and faculty, that a committee of professors henceforth pass judgment in student discipline cases? And should the university abandon its regents-conferred right to add its own punishment to any given out by courts to students arrested for illegal action—typically for civil rights demonstrations?

The regents rejected the first proposal by insisting that discipline must remain primarily up to the university administration and ultimately the regents. On the issue of political protests, the regents named a three-member committee to investigate and report next spring. Its instructions are to review university policy “with the intent of providing maximum freedom,” including free-speech and due-process protection guaranteed by the Constitution.

One regent summed up the climate of opinion. “Trying to determine what kind of student activity is legal was an ill-conceived stand in the first place,” he said. “In the end you have to let the courts decide what is lawful.”