Looking Out For Number One

First there was the Dunlop Committee. Then there was the Hoguet Committee. And now there is the Young committee.

If there is anything timeless about Harvard's 30-member Board of Overseers, it is their unusual penchant for self-scrutiny. Over the years, the Board has looked at everything from its relationship with the Corporation to its duties in evaluating the University's departments. "They study themselves to death," says one longtime observer.

This year, the overseers have begun what promises to be one of the most interesting internal inquiries to date--an investigation into the election procedures of the Board itself. Over the next year The Young Committee, named for its chairman, Boston Federal District Court Judge William G. Young '62, will examine how overseers are chosen.

Attention suddenly focused on the committee last year when for the first time a slate of prodivestment candidates made a bid for seats on the Board of Overseers. The candidates, who were nominated by petition, charged that Harvard's election procedures were unfairly weighted toward University nominees for the open seats on the Board.

The Young Committee, which had its first meeting this spring, was established three years ago before the most recent challenges to the election procedures by Alumni Against Apartheid. That activist group has sponsored a slate of candidates nominated by petition and running on a pro-divestment platform.

While members of the Young Committee have emphasized that the committee will not examine the current election, the seven-person panel may look at long-term policies governing election procedures and petition candidates. Young says that petition candidacies come under the rubric of the committee's mission, but will not say how much scrutiny will be given to them.

Overseers say they formed the committee not because of dissatisfaction with election procedures but because of concern that too few overseers were on hand to staff certain technical visiting committees. These committees, which in the Pusey years played a comparatively minor, almost perfunctory role by many accounts, have experienced a remarkable resurgence under President Bok.

The rapid increase in the number and depth of the committees over the last decade has produced staffing problems because most overseers do not have the competence to judge the science departments. "If you have lawyers being chairmen of science committees, sometimes they don't know what they are talking about," says Board President Samuel C. Butler '51, who favors an increase in the number of hard scientists and doctors on the Board.

"We don't have as many scientists as are desirable to cover visitation needs," says overseer Denie S. Weil '54, whose standing committee on visitation is responsible for supervising approximately 60 visiting committees.

One of the major constraints placed on the Young Committee promises to be the necessity of obtaining the approval of the state legislature for any major policy decisions. Because the overseers were established by the Commonwealth in 1642, large modifications such as extension of the franchise to more alumni, require approval by the Massachusetts Senate and House.

"There are various things you could not do without going to the Legislature," says Young. "You could not change the term of service or the franchise, but you could change the nominating process."

Although such issues would not be sent to the Legislature without prior approval by the Overseers and the seven-man Corporation, the University's other governing body, the need to obtain legislative approval has in the past been a stumbling block to major changes.

The last time electoral rules were modified came in the wake of the committee, which recommended in 1973 that the number of signatures needed to nominate a candidate by petition be changed from 200 to a percentage of the alumni who voted in the previous years. This year, that percentage amounted to 277 names.

A Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) committee nominates the official slate of overseers every year. The overseers, who serve for five year terms, are elected by alumni ballot.

Currently faculty and officers are prohibited from voting in accordance with an 1877 Massachusetts law. The regulation apparently was derived from fears of a conflict of interest between the faculty and a Board which has oversight over tenure cases. This exclusion came into focus this year after the administration made what it said was a particularly diligent effort to purge ineligible voters from the rolls.