Conclusions About Cornell

The nation will long be haunted by the specter of the armed rebellion on the campus of Cornell University for six days last April. Still fresh are the images of black students seizing Willard Straight Hall for 35 hours and emerg ing with shotguns and rifles only after the administration had capitulated to their demand for amnesty.

What were the underlying causes of student unrest that brought Cornell to such a time of agony? And how well was the university prepared to deal with the trouble when it finally boiled up? A special investigating committee of eight trustees, headed by Boston In surance Underwriter William R. Robertson, has been probing these questions all summer. Last week the committee reported its conclusions to the full board of trustees.

Ill Prepared. The trustee committee traced much of the blame for the campus troubles to lax discipline for several years before the crisis occurred. Said the trustees: "Cornell has not only consistently failed to employ disciplinary procedures available to it, but by refusing to employ such procedures has threatened materially the usefulness of these procedures for the future." The committee also blamed poor communication within the university, especially about the program to admit underqualified blacks, for fostering "misunder standing and resentment" that eventually produced last spring's near-calamitous insurrection.

While condemning the building seizure, the trustees criticized the administration for being ill prepared to cope with it. The report complained, without mentioning him by name, that President James Perkins failed to demonstrate visible leadership until more than 50 hours after the building had been seized.

Ambiguous Position. What of the administration's decision to grant the amnesty demands while the blacks were still holding the student union? The trustees took an ambiguous position. "Cornell had no bloodshed, no headlines of murder, no substantial property damage, no students hospitalized and in very short order a campus that was returned to relative peace," they conceded. Asserting that nobody will ever know if the administration's surrender was the right way to settle the crisis, the trustees noted that Cornell officials had placed the protection of life above the reputation of the university.

The trustees were anything but ambiguous, though, about how they believe Cornell must respond to campus disorders from now on. "The protection and preservation of order has now become of paramount importance to the university because of the emergence of that minority on campus who seek to replace reason with power," said the report. Should there ever be a repetition of last spring's troubles, they warned, "the university must not negotiate under duress. There must be no amnesty for infractions of the student conduct code."

The hard-line approach advocated by the trustees might have averted some of Cornell's problems last spring. But because the highly rhetorical report fails to recognize and identify some of the underlying causes of student discontent, it may well fall short of its goal of promoting campus tranquillity.

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