Board Will Review Its Position on Testifying

The Administrative Board of the College will review its policy of not allowing students to testify in their own behalf before the Board, Dean Monro said yesterday.

Discussion was prompted by a letter from the Harvard Policy Committee to Dean Monro, asking him "to state the Board's policy on this question and to explain its purposes and effects."

According to Monro, there is no written rule that bars students from appearing; it has merely been a custom of the Board since 1900 to do so. But this policy should be "scrutinized and tested regularly," he said.

Under its present regulations, the Board requires an offender to submit a letter stating the facts in his case; Monro pointed out that a student often consults members of the Board before they consider his case. He is notified of the Board's decision by his Senior Tutor.

The Board, which is made up of the deans and senior tutors, deals with both disciplinary and academic cases; there is no appeal from its decisions. It is apparently only in disciplinary cases that students would gain any advantage from testifying, and only if he were able to state the facts more clearly than in his letter.

Monro suggested that even the Faculty may want to review Administrative Board procedures, since it is a standing committee of the Faculty. "The HPC is entitled to a thorough, straightforward answer to its request," he said.

In his seven years as Dean of the College, Monro said, "there have been only one or two cases" in which there was any uncertainty about the facts involved. "Most cases that come to the Board are not severe anyway," he added. In an average year the Board "severs the connection" of about 15 undergraduates.

Michael E. Abram '66, chairman of the HPC, said yesterday that his letter was not intended to challenge the Board's policy directly, but just to investigate the reasons behind it. If the Committee finds, however, that the reasons do not justify the policy, the HPC may formally oppose it.