Alumni Group Pressures Overseers Board Establishes Committee To Revise Election Procedures

Partly in response to a campaign waged by the Committee of Concerned Alumni (CCA), the Board of Overseers has voted to establish a committee to study, and recommend changes in, current procedures for the nomination and election of Overseers.

The Committee

The study committee will meet during the summer and report its recommendations in November to the Overseers and to the Associated Harvard Alumni (AHA). It consists of F. Stanton Deland, Jr. '36 and Francis Keppel '38, current Overseers; Frederick B. Lee '28 and David B. Stone '50, past directors of the AHA; and Robert L. Hoguet '31, a retiring Overseer who will act as chairman. Daniel Steiner '54, counsel to the University, will serve as secretary for the committee.

"They may have been thinking about it before, but we galvinized them into action," Brett Donham '60, chairman of the CCA, said last night. "We sent the Board a letter May 10 detailing the defects of their election process and the ways in which we had been harrassed."

Petitions

The CCA, which was formed last June during the tenth reunion of the Class of 1960, last fall nominated Terry F. Lenzner '61 as an Overseer. In order to have his name placed on the ballot, which is mailed out to all Harvard alumni, the CCA had to produce petitions signed by alumni.

However, a majority of the nominees for the Board-12 of the 14 candidates for the six posts vacant this year-do not have to produce petitions. They are nominated by the AHA. Ballots are mailed to all alumni and the election of new Overseers is announced at Commencement.

"Originally the AHA was intended to handle the mechanics of the elections, and not become policy-makers," Michael W. Christian '60, a CCA member, said yesterday. "But the process became more important than the result, and the nominees came to be seen as representatives of a particular group rather than of all alumni."

According to Christian, the CCA, after nominating Lenzner, sent out questionnaires to all nominees regarding their positions on such issues as University investments. Christian said that the AHA directed its nominees to ignore the questionnaire, and then requested that The Harvard Bulletin, the alumni publication, refrain from printing the results of the questionnaire survey unless replies were received from all nominees.

'Bulletin' Stands Firm

A spokesman for The Bulletin confirmed that the AHA had made such a request and that the organization had advised the Bulletin to refuse to carry an advertisement for Lenzner's candidacy. However, the Bulletin did carry the ad as well as the questionnaire results.

The April 12 issue of the Bulletin carried the responses of five nominees-three nominated by the AHA and the two independent candidates. Lenzner and Cynthia Smith, a Cambridge wine dealer.

Among the AHA nominees who answered the questionnaire was Charles Ravenal '61. who, according to Christian, originally declined to respond be-cause he felt obligated to represent the AHA, which opposed the questionnaire.

Good Coverage

"The Bulletin ended up giving us very good coverage, which is very important," Christian said yesterday, "because the alumni see it as an organ of the University, although it is independent."

"We're not interested in electing ideologues to the Board, just young, bright, good-thinking people like Lenzner," Christian concluded. Lanzner is a former director of legal services for the Office of Economic Opportunity.

Besides working on the Overseers election, the CCA has also been working to persuade Harvard officials to back Campaign GM and other similar movements for corporate responsibility.