Glimp Directs Study Of Ad Board's Power

Dean Glimp will appoint a special nine-man committee next week to investigate the powers and procedures of the Administrative Board.

The Ad Board, a sixteen-member panel composed of Deans and Allston-Burr Senior Tutors, is the body that interprets University regulations and acts as the disciplinary agency for Harvard College.

"We need to look into the Ad Board's relation with the students, the Faculty, and the Houses," Glimp said last night. Glimp and several other Ad Board members speculated that some of the issues investigated might be:

Issues

* The legal aspects of the Ad Board's disciplinary function. Although the Board metes out punishment ranging from admonition to severance, it does not allow accused students or their lawyers to plead their cases.

* The nature of probation. Presently, there is no distinction between academic and disciplinary probation, even though "the two are very different problems," one Senior Tutor said.

* Absolute interpretation of University regulations. Present rules that forbid readmission to anyone who has been severed twice may be modified to permit individual consideration of each case.

* Recommendations from the Student-Faculty Advisory Committee's studies that seem relevant to the Ad Board's workings.

* Technical matters of University administration. Glimp would like to streamline many of the time-consuming routine procedures--such as granting extensions on papers--the Ad Board now must handle.

Joel M. Porte, Allston-Burr Senior Tutor of Quincy House said that last October's Dow demonstration necessitated an examination of the Board's traditional opposition to having students appear before it.

Not a Tribunal

"We are not a legal tribunal, and don't want to be one," Porte said. "It would limit our flexibility and demand all our time. But in light of new questions about punishment and self-in-crimination, we're going to have to look at this policy again."

However, both Porte and Glimp emphasized that the Ad Board investigation was "'in no way caused" by Dow or any other specific incident. "It's been four years since the operating rules were examined," Porte said, "and it's time to look them over again."

Glimp said that a regular review of the Board's practices was essential because of the Board's "lack of any standard operating manual." "Procedures tend to grow up to meet the needs of the day, and then they hang around as precedents," he said. In order to get "a new look at what we're doing," Glimp said he would appoint several professors who have never served on the Ad Board to the new committee.

Although the committee will be considering some of the same issues SFAC is investigating, it "will not in any way pre-empt SFAC," Glimp said. "We will be waiting for them to lob some specific suggestions for us to work on."

Any committee recommendations will have to be approved by the full Faculty. Glimp says he hopes to make a report sometime this Spring.