Harvard to Permit Secretaries to Leave Work Before Dark

All secretaries working for the administration will be allowed to leave work in time to get home before dark to protect them from assaults, an administration official said yesterday.

Stephen S. J. Hall, vice president for administration, said he plans to ask the Faculty to take similar action.

Hall's announcement came in the wake of an attack on Barbara Brown, a Harvard secretary, by an unidentified assailant who struck her in the face with a brick Tuesday night.

Another committee member, James Vorenberg '48, director of the Center for Criminal Justice, said yesterday that he has assigned three members of his staff to "lay out and compare" the violent crimes listed in the records of both the Cambridge and the Harvard police. "We are convinced that we will get leads for preventive action from this survey," he said.

Hall said he is permitting secretaries to leave earlier "because people respond to that sort of consideration by being more efficient." The murder of Ethel Higonnet Saturday night and the assault on Brown "occurred at 5:45 and 4:30 p.m. respectively, so that this action is important," Hall said.

Hall, chairman of the newly formed Committee to Study Violent Crimes, said that he wants "community and university police to work together so that residents can go home safely at night." He said cooperation will be aided by the presence of Capt. Francis Pisani of the Cambridge Police Department on the committee.

As a result of the meeting yesterday between Hall and the Cambridge police chief James Reagan, Harvard police cars will be equipped with Cambridge police radios and the Harvard police will now be called on as reinforcements in cases near the campus.