Alumni in Boardroom

Everybody knows Harvard runs the world. But, according to a study in yesterday's Boston Sunday Globe, Harvard runs Massachusetts as well.

In its computer survey of 204 public companies in Massachusetts, The Globe found that their 1713 board members are 96 percent white, 97 percent male--and 32.6 percent of them hold degrees from Harvard.

Among the companies with big Crimson representation in their boardrooms:

*Boston-based Northeast Investors, headed by $100,000-plus Harvard Campaign donor Ernest E. Monrad '51, where all five directors hold Harvard degrees.

*BayBanks Inc., where eight of 12 directors are Harvard alumni.

*Lowell-based Courier Corporation, which prints all the telephone books for New England, where six of seven directors are alumni.

*Lowell's Wang Laboratories headed by $4-million donor An Wangs 1948 Harvard PhD recipient, which has six grads on its 11-member board. Wang, with four Asians, also boasts the largest Asain representation on any Bay State board.

*Bank of New England, where nine of 20 members are alumni. The bank produced the University's current Treasurer, Radwick M. MacDougall '51, who left us $500,000-a-year chairmanship last June 30.

*Cambridge Trust, appropriately nestled in Holyoke Center, where 10 of 16 directors used to go to Harvard.

And it's not just business where Harvard makes itself felt. According to The Globe, 54 of 78 partners at the prestigious Boston law firm of Ropes & Gray come from the Law School. But only 33 of the 81 associates are Law School grads, which Ropes & Gray partner and former Harvard Corporation member Francis H. Burr '35 says is evidence that the strength of the Old Boy network is waning: "I think there was something to it way back then," Burr is quoted as saying, "[but] I don't think people fell there's a [Harvard] group anymore. People are much more open."