Divestment, Wiretaps And The Case of 507451

In May of 1985, two students, Anthony A. Ball '86 and John N. Ross '87, suggested the implausible.

The two students were then members of the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee, a pro-divestment group which organized a blockade in Lowell House that month when a top-ranking South African diplomat spoke there.

Harvard police broke the student's blockade with violence, and 19 complaints of police brutality were filed.

At the same time, Ross and Ball began to get inklings that the phones in their rooms were being tapped. Ball claimed he heard clicking sounds on his phone. And when the two students joked over the phone on a Thursday night about the possibility of taking over University Hall, Dean of students Archie C. Epps III asked them about it the next day.

Concerned, the two students set up a sting. On Friday night, May 3, 1985, the two men told each other over the phone, with only two Crimson reporters as witnesses, that they would take over the Harvard Magazine building at 7 Ware St. at midnight. They said over the phone that they would destroy or copy files belonging to publisher Alan G. Fein, and that they would use another student to deactivate the building's alarm.

Like clockwork, Harvard police cars began rolling up to the magazine building at 10:30 p.m. An alarm company was called into secure the alarm in the event of takeover.

Ball and Ross, who watched from a darkened fourth-floor room in Pennypacker, had all the evidence they needed. They filed a written complaint with Epps charging the University with tapping their phones in violation of federal law, and made their grievance public.

Four days later, then Vice President and General Counsel Daniel Steiner '54, President Derek C. Bok's leading adviser, produced what then appeared to be exonerating evidence.

Police incident report #507541 showed that the police had received an anonymous phone call about a possible building takeover at 7 ware to 10:30 that night.

That report got the University off the hook, despite further complaints by the students.

But now two reliable sources associated with the police department say that the report is a fake. That would men that a University that denies tapping student phones was attempting a cover-up.

Steiner calls that suggestion "total silliness. I heard the tape of the phone call myself," he says.

But a copy of report #507451 lends some credence to the sources' accounts. While the date written at the top is correct, the date from the department's electronic stamp--My 2--is just plain wrong. And Police Lt. Lawrence J. Murphy says that stamp "doesn't malfunction." Unless, of course, someone needed to change the date to backdate a report.

Considering the new information, bold statements made in May 1985 by Steiner appear now in a different light. The general counsel charged then that Ball and Ross had engaged in "politically motivated fabrications."

"It's an attempt to make a political issue where no issue exists," Steiner said. "I don't think it's worthy of much attention."

But the issue was, and still is worthy of attention. While many of the details remain unclear, the Case of 507451 raises questions about the University's current attempts to assume electronic control over students' lives.

Before too long, students will access their entries with electronic card keys which have individual codes that are easily monitored. The police department and administrators throughout the University already trace student calls through use of caller ID displays on their phones. And Harvard has the capability of reading the private communications of students sent over the electronic mail system, though it promises in not to.

It seems paranoid to depict Harvard as a Big brother watching us. But if history can be a guide, it may be equally naive to trust University officials when they promise that student-to-student communications are confidential.