Bok's New Plan For Voting Stock Enters 2nd Year

HARVARD'S BRIGHT new system for voting its stock on controversial shareholder resolutions enters its second year this Fall, with its creators convinced of its success, its detractors convinced it was tarnished from its inception, and large numbers of uninterested onlookers apparently convinced it doesn't make much difference anyway.

The system's second year will be mostly more of the same, with Harvard facing resolutions that would end or limit its investment in African countries with racist or colonial governments, in influencing American officials to favor big corporations, and in exploiting consumers, workers, and the environment.

"It's not too clear yet what the specific areas of controversy will be," Stephen B. Farber '63, special assistant to President Bok and the Administration's main man on shareholder issues, said last week. "But we expect some resolutions dealing with Namibia, and some of the other issues that were raised last year."

Last Spring Harvard backed two shareholder resolutions to have companies withdraw from Namibia, a southern African territory which South Africa rules in defiance of the United Nations and other opponents of apartheid.

Though the two-bodied machine for determining the way Harvard will vote its stock will start whirring again soon, several of the people inside the machine will be different. Although the machine has two bodies, it has only one head--a four-man subcommittee of the Harvard Corporation which makes the final decisions, whatever the recommendations of its advisory component, the 15-member Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR). There is only one change on the subcommittee: George Putnam '49, the University's new treasurer, has replaced George F. Bennett '33, the University's old treasurer. The other members are Fellows of Harvard College who share both treasurers' close ties to the corporate world they are supervising.

The Putnam-Bennett change almost certainly means that one more subcommittee member is likelier to support activist resolutions. Bennett generally regarded activist shareholders as unnecessary and irresponsible. "When we have a three-to-one vote to support a resolution, you don't even need to call," Bennett reportedly told one questioner towards the end of last Spring. "You can just assume I'm the dissenter."

Unlike Bennett, a holdover from the Pusey Administration, Putnam owes his appointment as treasurer to President Bok, and he is considered similar in some respects to many of Bok's other administrators (including his colleagues on the subcommittee), whom many supporters label flexible and some critics label slimy.

The very existence of the ACSR and the subcommittee testifies to the difference between the Bok and Pusey Administrations. When students seized University Hall in 1969, President Pusey called the police. When black students seized Massachusetts Hall in 1972, demanding that Harvard sell its Gulf Oil stock to protest the company's payments for African drilling rights to Portugal, then as now bloodily suppressing several African revolutions, the Administration quietly moved to Holyoke Center, and after a week the students left peacefully. The next Fall, Bok set up his new system--to weigh issues more carefully than he could, by his own account, and to shift the responsibility from his shoulders, according to some of his critics.

ALTHOUGH the subcommittee's power on shareholder questions is theoretically absolute, last year it never moved more than one notch from the ACSR's recommendations--abstaining on some resolutions the ACSR supported, and opposing some resolutions on which the ACSR urged abstention. About half the ACSR's members will be back this year, Farber said, with replacements for the other half chosen by methods used last year. Last year's academic members were selected by recommendations to Bok. The five faculty and three graduate student members were picked by the deans of their schools, and the five alumni were suggested by Maurice Lazarus '37, president of the Associated Harvard Alumni.

Farber said it was "very possible" that a GSAS student would replace one from the graduate schools currently represented, Business, Law, and Medicine. Membership on the committee is supposed to rotate among the graduate Schools; some observers suggested that GSAS's lack of representation from the committee in its first year might be related to the attempts by a Graduate Student and Teaching Fellows Union to organize in the School over the last two years.

Both undergraduate members of last year's ACSR were seniors, so both undergraduate positions on the committee are open. The Student Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, a group picked in House elections last Fall, will decide how the new undergraduate members will be chosen. Joel W. Motley '74, the chairman of the group, said last week that the committee will decide when it reconvenes.

Farber said that because the Administration has left the choice of ACSR members to other people it was impossible for him to predict changes in the committee's political composition.

"Last year both undergraduates were white males, for example," he said. "It's possible the Student ACSR will do the same thing this year, and it's possible they'll choose women or minority-group members."

Farber expressed great satisfaction with the work of the Investor Responsibility Research Center, a research group funded by about 60 institutional investors including Harvard, which he said has had a "very busy summer." Farber is the Center's board chairman.

The Center concentrated on requests from its members, Farber said. The ACSR and other Center members asked for information on extending power to ordinary shareholders (a favorite theme of shareholder resolutions), formulating guidelines for investment in countries with "objectionable" governments ("as you know," Farber said, "there are very many of these"), and the safety or lack of it at Westinghouse's and General Electric's nuclear reactors (an issue brought to the ACSR's attention last Spring by Richard Wilson, professor of Physics).

In addition, Farber said, the Center is completing a report on strip mining. Harvard students and other workers for Campaign Continental, an association formed by former Ralph Nader staffers and people from the Miners for Democracy caucus in the United Mine Workers, brought issues related to strip mining before the ACSR last Spring. The issue arose when shareholders in the Continental Oil Company asked for information on the surprisingly high accident rate in the company's Appalachian coal mines.

A NUMBER of precedents emerged from last Spring's stock debates, and it is unlikely that Harvard will break from them quickly, since both the ACSR--chaired by Stanley S. Surrey, Smith Professor of Law-- and the Corporation subcommittee showed interest in preserving continuity in University policy.

Among the precedents are:

The University supports disclosure by companies operating in South Africa of information on their tax payments to South Africa, the average salaries of their black and white workers, the history of their involvement in the country, government control of their operations, and other information relevant to their effect on black South Africans.

The University believes American companies should withdraw from Namibia, in accordance with United Nations and U.S. government recommendations.

The University opposes resolutions for affirmative action by firms with operations in South Africa unless it is clearly stipulated that such activity is not illegal under South African law.

The University is hostile to the idea of study committees, especially committees it considers "one-sided," because it believes they dilute management's responsibility.

The University supports disclosure of corporate political gifts only when the gifts are of proven significance. In other cases, the University abstains from voting, because it says it would be unfair to force corporations to disclose when other institutions such as labor unions and charitable foundations don't have to.

The University opposes resolutions for disclosure of contacts between corporate and government officials.

Time has changed even the most sacrosanct of Harvard's policies, of course, and in some cases these decisions were far from unanimous to begin with (several of them represent overrulings of the ACSR). Some issues become more widely publicized with time; others--military contracting by corporations, for example--recede in public interest. Nevertheless, barring the unforeseen--another building occupation like the one in the Spring of 1972 which helped bring about Bok's new system, or the withdrawal of a large gift by a donor who deemed the University's policies as a shareholder unsatisfactory (this recently happened at Berkeley, according to Farber)--these precedents probably will be the rule of thumb.

With interest in shareholder questions down considerably from the morning two Aprils ago when black students seized Mass Hall, the ACSR and the subcommittee will probably be operating pretty much on their own.

The comment of a Student ACSR member last year, which was made when other members of the group berated him for not seeking the opinions of the students who elected him actively enough, seems typical.

"I ask them about the issues," ho explained, "and they tell me, 'that's all right, just vote your conscience.'"