ACSR May Hold Extra Sessions Next Fall

Burdened with an unusually large number of proxy resolutions, the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) may meet in extra sessions next fall to consider broad questions about the University's investment policy, committee members said yesterday.

A three-fold increase in proxies--shareholder initiatives designed to force companies to change their policies--has prevented the 12-member student-faculty-alumni committee from dealing with all the issues it would like to address this spring, members said.

The ACSR advises Harvard's governing body on how to exercise the University's shareholder votes on questions of corporate policy and on broader ethical issues related to investments.

"With a heavy proxy load, it's obviously difficult to deal with general policy issues," said Professor of Business Administration John J. Gabarro, the head of the committee.

Gabarro has attributed the increase from 30 proxies last year to approximately 90 this year to changes in Securities and Exchange Commission laws making shareholder initiatives easier to submit.

Although one committee member called the decision to meet next fall "very tentative," Gabarro said that "there's a sense that we will probably meet in the fall."

Among the broad policy issues that may be up for consideration are Harvard's policies on investments in companies involved with President Reagan's controversial Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), and whether investments in South Africa should be treated differently than those in other "repressive regimes," Gabarro said.

In the last two years, the ACSR has spent much of its time advising the University on general investment policies for its $3.2 billion endowment, especially the $416 million invested in South Africa.

If the ACSR does meet next fall, its agenda will likely include not only general investment policy guidelines, but also consideration of an anticipated Undergraduate Council report on the council's student referendum on divestment, said committee member Wilson C. McLeod, a first-year Law School student. By an almost two-to-one margin, students participating in the referendum supported total divestment from companies doing business in South Africa.

The council report may be released as early as mid-May, but intensive ACSR meetings during reading and exam periods are "absurd from the point of view of students," McLeod said.

At its meeting Monday, the ACSR voted on four of the approximately 45 proxies which remain on this year's agenda, Gabarro said. Originally, the group was scheduled to review nine proxy resolutions, but the research center which furnishes the committee with information on companies in Harvard's portfolio was unable to give the ACSR the necessary reports on time, he said.

"They're overloaded like we are," Gabarro said.

The ACSR will not reveal the results of its proxy recommendations until after the seven-man Corporation, which has the final say on Harvard's investment policies, has decided whether or not to follow the committee's advice.