Reunion Deals Raise Questions

MANCHESTER-BY-THE-SEA, Mass.--Since sometime before World War II, the Essex County Club, nestled here in the rolling hills of the Massachusetts North Shore, has annually played host to the Harvard 25th reunion's day-long outing of golf, tennis and symposia.

Throughout those years, Harvard developed a friendly relationship with the dub: Harvard got plush surroundings to wine and dine its alumni and Essex received a reliable source of annual revenue.

That relationship abruptly ended three years ago, when, after decades, Harvard moved its annual gathering to Southborough, Mass., and the relatively less exclusive St. Mark's School, which charges a yearly tuition of $19,150.

Club members and a town selectman in this seaside town say the Essex County Club has no Black members, but Harvard's decision to leave had little to do with the exclusiveness of the club or the University's policy of non-discrimination.

Instead, Harvard left because the club, under pressure from members who disliked the intrusion of outsiders, hiked its rental fee, and the reunion got a better deal elsewhere, according to some club members.

Still, some members express regret about Harvard's decision to leave Manchester for Southborough.

"I don't know why it ended," says George Cancer, a Boston attorney and club member. "I'm distressed that it has ended."

Cozy, long-term relationships like this one are the rule, not the exception, in the planning of Harvard reunions. When the University looks outside for help, it hires people it knows, and rarely, if ever, takes them off the reunion dole.

Although these contractual relationships simplify the complex task of managing one of the world's largest and most prestigious parties, they also can lead to inefficiency, prodigality and arrangements which may compromise University principle.

The Essex County Club, for example, left Harvard in a murky area. Club members say the reason they have no Blacks in the club is because none have ever wanted to join. They also say they have no written policy barring racial minorities from the

club. Therefore, there's no discrimination, and no conflict with University policy.

University officials seem unclear themselves about whether any of Harvard's reunion contracts violate school regulations. Michael J. Barone, director of internal auditing, says conflict-of-interest and bidding policies are set by each department in the University, and he was unsure what, if any such policies, applied to the reunions and the various departments involved with them.

"Harvard would not have a formal University-wide policy on [bidding]," says Barone. "The University is so decentralized, each of the faculties and vice presidents may have different policies."

Marion R. Briefer, who organizes the 25th reunion, says there are bidding procedures for everything her office does. Asked to state his specific policy on bidding, Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Fred L. Glimp '50 said his office employs bidding for the reunions when officials feel that prices charged by current vendors have gotten too steep.

It's not clear if a bid was put out in the case of the Essex County Club. The business manager at St. Mark's school says he and Harvard-worked out a deal that was better than what the University got at Essex, and Briefer did not return two phone calls last week.

Dumping the club, which enjoys an exalted place in Harvard lore because coach Percy Houghton quartered the football team there before the 1919 Yale game, seemed to eliminate a cozy relationship.

But in this case, it was replaced by another. Harvard's deal with St. Mark's says the school provides reunions with set-up, clean-up and all its facilities for a standard fee. The school's business manager, Edward J. Gotgart '68, is serving as co-chair of his 25th Harvard reunion this week.

It's 11 a.m. on Memorial Day, and Harvard Police Lt. Lawrence J. Murphy is alone at the office. He's not sitting in the 29 Garden St. police station, where he currently presides as the officer-in-charge while Chief Paul E. Johnson undergoes medical treatment. Instead, he's set up at a desk in the Medford office of Cavalier Coach Corporation, the primary bus company for reunion week.

Murphy works closely with Cavalier Coach--so closely, in fact, that rumors of possible financial ties between the lieutenant and the company have circulated around the police department for years.

But Murphy says he spends time at the bus office in order to work out the maze of Commencement bus schedules, and that he has no personal relationship to the company. The Massachusetts secretary of state's office does not list Murphy as either a director or owner in the company.

The cozy working relationship between the lieutenant and the bus company is very lucrative for Cavalier. The reunion requires dozens of buses, including 22 at a single time for this week's trip by the Class of 1968 to the Boston Pops.

Murphy's close ties with both Harvard and Cavalier insure that the relationship between the two will grow and prosper to the great benefit of the bus company. Cavalier has been employed by Harvard reunions for more than a decade, sources say.

Murphy says Cavalier is not the only bus company employed during reunion week. The Yankee Line bus company gets significant business as well.

But the permanency of the relationship between Harvard and Cavalier, through Murphy, is all but written in stone. The checklists Briefer uses year after year to plan the 25th reunion remind her to schedule a meeting with Murphy and Cavalier President Joan Libby in mid-winter.

One of the largest and most lucrative contracts related to Commencement and reunion activities is held by Interstate Rental Service Inc. of Boston, a special event services company.

Interstate provides and sets up at least 26,000 chairs, hundreds of tables, several platforms and some of the tents which go up around campus during Commencement week, according to Interstate employees.

This contract, like others relating to reunion activities, has been held by only a handful of companies over the last quarter of a century. According to one Interstate worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Harvard has been hiring Interstate for more than 20 consecutive years.

"We do this every year, though fully only for the last 15 years," says the worker, who has been with Interstate for 23 years. "Until 15 years ago, someone else subcontracted the job out to us, but [Harvard] liked us so they never called them back," he says.

Interstate, according to job supervisor Edward C. Kennedy Jr., provides the tables, chairs and other rental items for Commencement not only for the Yard, but also for all of the undergraduate houses, Harvard Business School, Radcliffe and the area surrounding the biology labs.

Because of Harvard's minimal supervision of Interstate's work, some Interstate employees are paid a full day's salary for only a few minutes of work, according to the Interstate employee.

Interstate is not subject to the kind of close University scrutiny that would ensure the efficient use of labor resources, Interstate employees say.

One Interstate supervisor "comes in for one minute a day, doesn't say anything, then leaves," the worker says.

The deeply entrenched relationships between Harvard and its contractors like Interstate demonstrate just how much Harvard values continuity over aggressive bid-seeking.

In awarding contracts for reunions and Commencement-related events, the University treats many companies like old friends.

Instead of submitting bids, outside companies, which are used year in and year out for the same jobs, enter directly into price negotiations as if they were in-house Harvard departments guaranteed the work. The arrangement effectively serves to screen some companies from bidding on Harvard contracts.

But Robert L. Dwyer, a buyer in Harvard's purchasing office, says the University "realistically renegotiates" its contracts with its reunion companies each year and that new contracts are considered annually. "We keep an eye on the market," Dwyer says.

Asked to cite an example, Dwyer says Harvard turned to bidding last year after one of the companies it had long employed went out of business. But outside bids were higher than the rate current contractors were charging, Dwyer says, and so he allowed the work to be absorbed by existing workers.

The manager of Roland L. Appleton Inc., a Boston chair rental firm hired for Commencement, says "quite a few" firms which have worked for Harvard in the past are "automatically hired" each year, and that all these firms must do is set a price with Dwyer.

Appleton's manager says in the 20 consecutive years his firm has served Harvard he has never submitted a bid. He says firms with long histories of service to Harvard are not asked to submit annual bids for their work.

The manager for Camelot Rentals, another local chair firm, says Camelot submitted a bid to Harvard but that it was turned down. "The impression I get from many schools is that if what they're doing works, they basically tend to stay with what they're doing," the manager says. "If it works, why fix it?"

While contractors like Interstate setup chairs by day, Harvard continues a tradition of paying students to guard them by night.

Roger J. Landry '92-'93 and Justin Gray '96, two Harvard students paid to guard the chairs and tents set up during the week preceding Commencement, say there is really not all that much to their job, for which they are paid $7.50 per hour.

"This job is just one of those thousands of sinecures or 'nothing jobs' created for students," Landry says.

Gray and Landry both says their task is merely to watch the tent and chairs, even though a Harvard security guard is paid over-time wages to do the same thing simultaneously.

Moreover, Harvard police are also directed to make frequent sweeps of Tercentenary Theatre, making Harvard's rented chairs some of the best-protected folding seats around.

Many local caterers serve the same reunion functions each year. In these cases, competition appears to be stiffer, at least in part because alumni, and not the University, hire caterers and often are not as locked in to the same contractors.

Caterers say they will often accept a lower profit on a Harvard alumni event because of the exposure they get for the company.

"We do pretty well in getting good companies because they want our business because of our volume," says Briefer, who organizes the 25th reunion. "Caterers, for example, want to be exposed to people like Harvard alumni."

Boone Pendergrast, manager of the East Coast Grill, says his company has been catering reunion events for the last several years. He says he is trying to develop a relationship with the 10th reunion, and for the second straight year will cater an event for the 10th reunion class in Kirkland House.

"I think they're looking for good, fun food," says Pendergrast. "We cook on site with our Supersmoker, which is on a trailer six by thirteen feet long. That creates a lot of excitement."

Pendergrast says the reunions are like other events East Coast Grill caters. But Pendergrast acknowledges that membership in the club of companies that serve Harvard reunions has its particular privileges.

"The exposure is incredible," says Pendergrast. "I would guess a large majority of [alumni] living within the Boston area will get to know the restaurant."

Every year, Harvard arranges two nights at Symphony Hall for alumni to watch the Boston Pops.

From door to door, it's a luxurious night out. A police escort takes the buses straight to the concert, tying up traffic along the way.

Booking the hall is not a complicated task. Harvard reunions have been going to the Pops for so long that ticket sales for two nights every June have been blocked off.

"We pretty much know Harvard's going to come the same dates every year, so we pretty much set aside the dates every year," says Helen Hoey, group sales coordinator for the Pops.

Harvard's method of payment to the hall is different from other area colleges, which also go to the Pops on special occasions. While other colleges rent out the hall itself, Harvard pays more by buying each seat individually, says Hoey. The total cost, with a one dollar discount per seat, is $80,743 a night, according to The Crimson's estimate using figures provided by the Pops.

But the University's outlay to the Pops is more than that. Harvard Business School also buys out the house, and different reunions rent some of the function rooms inside Symphony Hall, too.

University officials and these companies all insist that their relationships are proper and beneficial to Harvard. However, the tendency to leave these long-standing relationships on automatic pilot allows room for abuse. Even when Harvard is policing itself, oversight may be lacking.

Director of Dining Services Michael P. Berry, for example, says that when he first arrived at Harvard two years ago, money from undergraduate fees was partially subsidizing the cost of feeding alumni. He says he's fixed that, and now the dining service turns a small profit from reunion work.

There's no evidence of any wrongdoing in most of these cases, but as Harvard moves further into the 1990s, its reunions are depending on some contracts that were penned in the 1970s, or even before that.

Changing standards of discrimination may have made it wise for Harvard to reevaluate its relationship with the Essex County Club.

But reevaluation and oversight of long-standing contracts do not seem to be on Harvard's reunion checklist. Rather, contractors and Harvard reunion seem to reunite every year to share a week-long party.

Two students, frequent police sweeps and a security officer working overtime guard Harvard's rented chairs, making them some of the best-protected folding seats around.

Although cozy contractual relationships simplify the task of organizers, they also can lead to inefficiency, prodigality, and arrangements that may compromise Harvard principles.CrimsonAndrew L. WrightThe Essex clubhouse. For decades, 25th reunion alumni enjoyed golf, tennis and symposia at the exclusive club.

club. Therefore, there's no discrimination, and no conflict with University policy.

University officials seem unclear themselves about whether any of Harvard's reunion contracts violate school regulations. Michael J. Barone, director of internal auditing, says conflict-of-interest and bidding policies are set by each department in the University, and he was unsure what, if any such policies, applied to the reunions and the various departments involved with them.

"Harvard would not have a formal University-wide policy on [bidding]," says Barone. "The University is so decentralized, each of the faculties and vice presidents may have different policies."

Marion R. Briefer, who organizes the 25th reunion, says there are bidding procedures for everything her office does. Asked to state his specific policy on bidding, Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Fred L. Glimp '50 said his office employs bidding for the reunions when officials feel that prices charged by current vendors have gotten too steep.

It's not clear if a bid was put out in the case of the Essex County Club. The business manager at St. Mark's school says he and Harvard-worked out a deal that was better than what the University got at Essex, and Briefer did not return two phone calls last week.

Dumping the club, which enjoys an exalted place in Harvard lore because coach Percy Houghton quartered the football team there before the 1919 Yale game, seemed to eliminate a cozy relationship.

But in this case, it was replaced by another. Harvard's deal with St. Mark's says the school provides reunions with set-up, clean-up and all its facilities for a standard fee. The school's business manager, Edward J. Gotgart '68, is serving as co-chair of his 25th Harvard reunion this week.

It's 11 a.m. on Memorial Day, and Harvard Police Lt. Lawrence J. Murphy is alone at the office. He's not sitting in the 29 Garden St. police station, where he currently presides as the officer-in-charge while Chief Paul E. Johnson undergoes medical treatment. Instead, he's set up at a desk in the Medford office of Cavalier Coach Corporation, the primary bus company for reunion week.

Murphy works closely with Cavalier Coach--so closely, in fact, that rumors of possible financial ties between the lieutenant and the company have circulated around the police department for years.

But Murphy says he spends time at the bus office in order to work out the maze of Commencement bus schedules, and that he has no personal relationship to the company. The Massachusetts secretary of state's office does not list Murphy as either a director or owner in the company.

The cozy working relationship between the lieutenant and the bus company is very lucrative for Cavalier. The reunion requires dozens of buses, including 22 at a single time for this week's trip by the Class of 1968 to the Boston Pops.

Murphy's close ties with both Harvard and Cavalier insure that the relationship between the two will grow and prosper to the great benefit of the bus company. Cavalier has been employed by Harvard reunions for more than a decade, sources say.

Murphy says Cavalier is not the only bus company employed during reunion week. The Yankee Line bus company gets significant business as well.

But the permanency of the relationship between Harvard and Cavalier, through Murphy, is all but written in stone. The checklists Briefer uses year after year to plan the 25th reunion remind her to schedule a meeting with Murphy and Cavalier President Joan Libby in mid-winter.

One of the largest and most lucrative contracts related to Commencement and reunion activities is held by Interstate Rental Service Inc. of Boston, a special event services company.

Interstate provides and sets up at least 26,000 chairs, hundreds of tables, several platforms and some of the tents which go up around campus during Commencement week, according to Interstate employees.

This contract, like others relating to reunion activities, has been held by only a handful of companies over the last quarter of a century. According to one Interstate worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Harvard has been hiring Interstate for more than 20 consecutive years.

"We do this every year, though fully only for the last 15 years," says the worker, who has been with Interstate for 23 years. "Until 15 years ago, someone else subcontracted the job out to us, but [Harvard] liked us so they never called them back," he says.

Interstate, according to job supervisor Edward C. Kennedy Jr., provides the tables, chairs and other rental items for Commencement not only for the Yard, but also for all of the undergraduate houses, Harvard Business School, Radcliffe and the area surrounding the biology labs.

Because of Harvard's minimal supervision of Interstate's work, some Interstate employees are paid a full day's salary for only a few minutes of work, according to the Interstate employee.

Interstate is not subject to the kind of close University scrutiny that would ensure the efficient use of labor resources, Interstate employees say.

One Interstate supervisor "comes in for one minute a day, doesn't say anything, then leaves," the worker says.

The deeply entrenched relationships between Harvard and its contractors like Interstate demonstrate just how much Harvard values continuity over aggressive bid-seeking.

In awarding contracts for reunions and Commencement-related events, the University treats many companies like old friends.

Instead of submitting bids, outside companies, which are used year in and year out for the same jobs, enter directly into price negotiations as if they were in-house Harvard departments guaranteed the work. The arrangement effectively serves to screen some companies from bidding on Harvard contracts.

But Robert L. Dwyer, a buyer in Harvard's purchasing office, says the University "realistically renegotiates" its contracts with its reunion companies each year and that new contracts are considered annually. "We keep an eye on the market," Dwyer says.

Asked to cite an example, Dwyer says Harvard turned to bidding last year after one of the companies it had long employed went out of business. But outside bids were higher than the rate current contractors were charging, Dwyer says, and so he allowed the work to be absorbed by existing workers.

The manager of Roland L. Appleton Inc., a Boston chair rental firm hired for Commencement, says "quite a few" firms which have worked for Harvard in the past are "automatically hired" each year, and that all these firms must do is set a price with Dwyer.

Appleton's manager says in the 20 consecutive years his firm has served Harvard he has never submitted a bid. He says firms with long histories of service to Harvard are not asked to submit annual bids for their work.

The manager for Camelot Rentals, another local chair firm, says Camelot submitted a bid to Harvard but that it was turned down. "The impression I get from many schools is that if what they're doing works, they basically tend to stay with what they're doing," the manager says. "If it works, why fix it?"

While contractors like Interstate setup chairs by day, Harvard continues a tradition of paying students to guard them by night.

Roger J. Landry '92-'93 and Justin Gray '96, two Harvard students paid to guard the chairs and tents set up during the week preceding Commencement, say there is really not all that much to their job, for which they are paid $7.50 per hour.

"This job is just one of those thousands of sinecures or 'nothing jobs' created for students," Landry says.

Gray and Landry both says their task is merely to watch the tent and chairs, even though a Harvard security guard is paid over-time wages to do the same thing simultaneously.

Moreover, Harvard police are also directed to make frequent sweeps of Tercentenary Theatre, making Harvard's rented chairs some of the best-protected folding seats around.

Many local caterers serve the same reunion functions each year. In these cases, competition appears to be stiffer, at least in part because alumni, and not the University, hire caterers and often are not as locked in to the same contractors.

Caterers say they will often accept a lower profit on a Harvard alumni event because of the exposure they get for the company.

"We do pretty well in getting good companies because they want our business because of our volume," says Briefer, who organizes the 25th reunion. "Caterers, for example, want to be exposed to people like Harvard alumni."

Boone Pendergrast, manager of the East Coast Grill, says his company has been catering reunion events for the last several years. He says he is trying to develop a relationship with the 10th reunion, and for the second straight year will cater an event for the 10th reunion class in Kirkland House.

"I think they're looking for good, fun food," says Pendergrast. "We cook on site with our Supersmoker, which is on a trailer six by thirteen feet long. That creates a lot of excitement."

Pendergrast says the reunions are like other events East Coast Grill caters. But Pendergrast acknowledges that membership in the club of companies that serve Harvard reunions has its particular privileges.

"The exposure is incredible," says Pendergrast. "I would guess a large majority of [alumni] living within the Boston area will get to know the restaurant."

Every year, Harvard arranges two nights at Symphony Hall for alumni to watch the Boston Pops.

From door to door, it's a luxurious night out. A police escort takes the buses straight to the concert, tying up traffic along the way.

Booking the hall is not a complicated task. Harvard reunions have been going to the Pops for so long that ticket sales for two nights every June have been blocked off.

"We pretty much know Harvard's going to come the same dates every year, so we pretty much set aside the dates every year," says Helen Hoey, group sales coordinator for the Pops.

Harvard's method of payment to the hall is different from other area colleges, which also go to the Pops on special occasions. While other colleges rent out the hall itself, Harvard pays more by buying each seat individually, says Hoey. The total cost, with a one dollar discount per seat, is $80,743 a night, according to The Crimson's estimate using figures provided by the Pops.

But the University's outlay to the Pops is more than that. Harvard Business School also buys out the house, and different reunions rent some of the function rooms inside Symphony Hall, too.

University officials and these companies all insist that their relationships are proper and beneficial to Harvard. However, the tendency to leave these long-standing relationships on automatic pilot allows room for abuse. Even when Harvard is policing itself, oversight may be lacking.

Director of Dining Services Michael P. Berry, for example, says that when he first arrived at Harvard two years ago, money from undergraduate fees was partially subsidizing the cost of feeding alumni. He says he's fixed that, and now the dining service turns a small profit from reunion work.

There's no evidence of any wrongdoing in most of these cases, but as Harvard moves further into the 1990s, its reunions are depending on some contracts that were penned in the 1970s, or even before that.

Changing standards of discrimination may have made it wise for Harvard to reevaluate its relationship with the Essex County Club.

But reevaluation and oversight of long-standing contracts do not seem to be on Harvard's reunion checklist. Rather, contractors and Harvard reunion seem to reunite every year to share a week-long party.

Two students, frequent police sweeps and a security officer working overtime guard Harvard's rented chairs, making them some of the best-protected folding seats around.

Although cozy contractual relationships simplify the task of organizers, they also can lead to inefficiency, prodigality, and arrangements that may compromise Harvard principles.CrimsonAndrew L. WrightThe Essex clubhouse. For decades, 25th reunion alumni enjoyed golf, tennis and symposia at the exclusive club.