Challenging Harvard's top dogs

A bitter argument early last month between two obscure Harvard employees over the use of a Holyoke Center computer has escalated into a complex, hotly contested appeal proceeding that hinges partly on charges of incompetence against two of Harvard's vice presidents, a high level University financial officer and several of its computer experts.

The allegations have raised the extraordinary prospect of a handful of Harvard's most powerful administrators defending their decisions in the press and, later this fall, in an appeal hearing. Extensive public disclosure of internal administrative disputes and errors is virtually unheard of at Harvard.

The charges of incompetence and other costly mistakes, most of which University officials either denied or declined comment on earlier this month, have been made by one of the two relatively unknown employees, Michael W. Brown-Beasley, in his hitherto unsuccessful attempt to overturn his August 4 dismissal for insubordination as assistant to the director of the Office of Fiscal Services.

In a series of interviews earlier this month, Brown-Beasley charged:

That his ex-boss, the director of the Office of Fiscal Services, is incompetent. The director, a ten-year veteran of the Harvard campus ministry named R. Jerrold Gibson '51, is a "Sancho Panza," Brown-Beasley claims, who is not qualified to direct Fiscal Services and who cannot freely use the technical advice of his own staff on computers because of a special veto power created by Hale Champion, vice president for finances;

That Joe B. Wyatt, the newly appointed vice president for administration, made costly errors on computer systems and applications recommendations in his previous positions as director of Financial Systems and Information Technology and director of the Office of Information Technology (OIT). Brown-Beasley states that the Texas-born and-bred Wyatt's dual positions constituted a conflict of interest, offering Wyatt an unfair advantage in his attempt to improve operations of the once troubled computing center;

That Financial Vice President Champion--who brought Wyatt to Harvard in 1972 and remains close to his now fellow vice president--erred in assigning Wyatt the Financial Systems post that gave him veto power over Gibson's computer decisions;

And that staff members of OIT--a little-known University organization that for a fee offers in-house advice on computer use--have repeatedly milked Fiscal Services by sloppy contract enforcement and incompetent systems and applications analysis.

Brown-Beasley has also charged that Champion and the Personnel Department have seriously mishandled his grievance case, failing to comply with requirements of the Harvard Salaried Personnel Manual and the common law tradition. In addition, he accused Edward W. Powers, associate general counsel for employee relations and Harvard's foremost labor relations troubleshooter, of telling him that the "reality" was that it would be virtually impossible to rehire Brown-Beasley even if he prevailed in his complaint. As a result, Brown-Beasley said, the University's general counsel, Daniel Steiner '54, pulled Powers off his case. Powers denies this charge, and Steiner says he has not pulled Powers off the case.

Early last week, in the first formal decision in Brown-Beasley's appeal, Champion rejected the fired employee's appeal. The vice-president had conducted a personal investigation as head of the administrative department in which Brown-Beasley works: as head of Fiscal Services, Gibson reports to Champion. On September 15, Brown-Beasley informed Harvard that he wishes to push his appeal to the next step outlined in the personnel manual, a formal, trial-like hearing held before a three-member panel. That committee will present its findings to President Bok or Steiner for a final ruling.

The refusal of several principle figures, including Gibson, to comment last week hampered attempts to obtain administrative response to many of Brown-Beasley's accusations. Thus most of the questions he has raised remain unanswered.

Brown-Beasley's charges, which he has backed with letters, memoranda and other documents, revolve around several projects in the Office of Fiscal Services. They include:

Delays, cost overruns, and incompetence in two attempts to create a computerized miscellaneous accounts receivable system (MAR), an integral part of the operations of Fiscal Services. A miscellaneous accounts receivable system is set up to bill inside and outside clients of the University for services they have received, such as Faculty Club meals, medical services, and publications.

Negligence last fall in the mailing of bursar's cards valid through 1980 to faculty members and other University officers, some of whom either had already left Harvard or whose appointments would expire within five years. The 10/80 card mailing generated fear among Harvard librarians that the cards would be used to steal books.

Delays and cost overruns in the attempt to form a new name and address (NAMAD) retrieval system for use in Fiscal Services, which requires up-to-date information on students, employees and alumni.

In defending Brown-Beasley's firing and his decision to uphold the dismissal, Champion last week cited Gibson's August 25 report on Brown-Beasley's actions, including the early August Holyoke Center incident. The acts described in the document, Champion said, constitute insubordination. The vice president also charged that Brown-Beasley "doesn't have any long-term relationships with anybody" and has a record of difficulties in a variety of jobs he has held at Harvard since 1969.

Brown-Beasley has denied this accusation, and permitted an examination of his personnel record, which includes no negative information other than his recent termination on the many jobs he has held here over the last decade. Asked to explain, Champion said that Harvard prefers "not to fill personnel files full of adverse information." Brown-Beasley has also responded by asserting that Gibson's report to Champion contains several inaccuracies and by arguing that he was obliged, at times, to disobey Gibson because his "incompetent" directives could have led to costly errors such as damage to Harvard's computers.

Along with some specific defenses of decisions on computer systems and applications, Harvard officials have argued, in Champion's words, that such decisions must involve some "trial and error" and loss of money. "An inferior system will work better among people who respect one another than a system that might be more useful" but that is being created or operated by persons suspicious of each other, Champion added.

The following is an examination of the major issues that Brown-Beasley has raised:

Gibson and 'incompetence'

Brown-Beasley's challenge of the competence of his superior, Fiscal Services Director Gibson, is one of the mainstays of his appeal. Brown-Beasley--who holds four graduate degrees including a masters from Harvard in Regional Studies-East Asia--notes that Gibson holds a graduate degree in theology and is listed in the 1975 Harvard Alumni Directory as occupied in the ministry. Indeed, Gibson spent ten years in Harvard's campus ministry before beginning to work in Harvard's Admissions and Financial Aid office in 1966.

According to Champion, Gibson's work in admissions and on student employment and loans were major reasons behind the financial vice president's selection of Gibson to head the Office of Fiscal Services, an offshoot of Champion's 1973 reorganization of services once grouped in the comptroller's office. Gibson was not, Champion adds, a "theoretical systems guy," but he instead had "actually lived in an university environment and understood well" the problem of student financial aid.

Gibson has himself called attention to his interests and qualifications. In the Harvard Class of 1951 25th reunion book, he wrote:

...my greatest concern is still in the area of financial planning so that any qualified applicant can manage to attend Harvard. Just now that requires major attention to both federal and state programs, and Harvard has been a leader in student financial aid planning...Lately I have taken responsibility for various financial services around Harvard, and no one understands how such a thing could have happened. I'm the first to admit that my credentials aren't exactly typical.

In his position as director of the Office of Fiscal Services, Gibson supervises financial transactions within the University such as student loans, term bills and payroll. However, the office's responsibilities extend into other areas that do not clearly follow from its general mandate. These include shaping bursars card policy and managing the miscellaneous accounts receivable.

Not surprisingly, computers are an essential part of the office's operations, and when Champion reorganized the comptrolling functions, he ordered Gibson to obtain the approval of Wyatt, then director of OIT and of Financial Systems and Information Technology, before proceeding with any new computer systems. Champion said last week he gave this power to Wyatt "because he knows more about that than anyone else."

Wyatt's special veto power helped generate much of the conflict among Brown-Beasley, Gibson and OIT staffers before the August 3 Holyoke Center incident over the computer, and it has also become the hub of Brown-Beasley's conflict of interest charges. The 36-year-old Brown-Beasley, who worked at OIT for seven months before working for Gibson, objected to many of the recommendations on computer systems and applications made by Wyatt and his subordinates at OIT. Having received the order to submit to Wyatt in such areas, Gibson continued to defer to the Financial Systems director. Brown-Beasley was, Champion says, "asking Mr. Gibson to make decisions he thought were Mr. Gibson's, but that in fact were not."

Gibson alleged in his memo on the dismissal that "Within the office Michael frequently disparaged senior staff people within the University. Within Fiscal Services, I began to hear that he was talking about me behind my back and that the word most often quoted was his reverence to me as 'spineless."' Brown-Beasley does not deny that he called Gibson spineless; instead, he states that he did so not only to colleagues in Fiscal Services but also to Gibson's face during "cordial" conversations.

Conflict of interest

Brown-Beasley contends that Champion's appointment of OIT director Wyatt to fill the Financial Systems post created a conflict of interest in Wyatt's work. His interest in running OIT smoothly and on an even financial keel, Brown-Beasley suggests, was likely to influence the advice Wyatt and his staff would offer as head of Financial Systems (indeed, Wyatt's success on this front was cited this summer when he was named to the vice presidential post); In other words, in his second position Wyatt held a consulting veto power over decisions like whether or not to contract for work from OIT. From the Financial Systems post, Brown-Beasley adds, Wyatt could assure the OIT computer, analysts and programmers a steady stream of work. He would also be less likely to blow the whistle on projects that ran past deadlines and that thus afforded more pay for OIT.

Champion, along with Wyatt, dismisses the argument as "a goddamn fiction...the biggest crock I've ever heard of..." and offers a counter charge of sour grapes, suggesting that the conflict of interest is a creation of someone who is jealous of work going to another.

(Following the University's budgetary first commandment, "Each tub shall sitteth on its own bottom," the services of OIT consultants are structured on a fee for service basis, with analysts paid between $10 and $25 and hour according to Guy J. Ciannavei '55, manager of the computing center. OIT's predecessor, the computing center, violated this rule, running up a deficit of over $1 million so in 1972 the center went through a shake-up, with the dismissal of several top officers, the disposal of a large IBM computer, and the laying off of about half the center's staff. With a more carefully constructed rate structure, OIT has run in the black for the last several years, Ciannavei said last week. By July 1, the end of the last fiscal year, OIT had accumulated a surplus of approximately $200,000 which will be rolled over to the '77 year.)

Miscellaneous accounts receivable

Brown-Beasley's criticisms of Gibson, the two vice presidents and computer experts at OIT extend into specific computer systems for and applications at Fiscal Services. One of his most extensive differences with them is over the formation of the new on-line miscellaneous accounts receivable (MAR) system in Fiscal Services.

Brown-Beasley's criticism of the MAR system states the following:

That Gibson ordered the original, manual MAR system files dismantled, over the objections of his staff, months before the first attempt to automate the files had been tested, a violation of the traditional minimum overlap of several months;

That because the first system had failed, for over a year Fiscal Services staff members "repeatedly [had] to inform our clients that we had no way of knowing whether a specific invoice had been paid or whether a specific account was current or not;"

That the initial MAR system included a "patently unworkable" account labeling scheme using the first seven letters of a client's name that, from the outset, prevented successful implementation of a balance-forward monthly statement approach because "it guaranteed that charges to a series of different clients, say, General Dynamics, General Electric, General Motors, and General Telephone, would all, all have their charges appear on one and the same monthly statement..."

That the initial applications software (the programs for the computer system, as opposed to the machine itself, which is called the hardware) could not be salvaged after running over the deadline several months and cost thousands of dollars over the original contract cost;

That the second software system still is not operative four and one-half months after the deadline for its final testing because of careless execution of the contract with the software company and sloppy tailoring of the software program at OIT;

That the hardware for the system, a Datapoint 5500, is inadequate and was chosen in part because in early 1975 Wyatt overturned an OIT-staff recommendation on hardware for a payroll system and ordered use of a Datapoint machine.

Most of these allegations have not been responded to systematically because Gibson, and Kenneth E. Shostack and Edward W. Deehy, staff analysts at OIT, declined to comment on the Brown-Beasley case. However, Wyatt defended the choice of Datapoint hardware for the payroll system in an interview last week, stating that the OIT staff had recommended the Datapoint machine for a "distributed" computer system and a Hewlett-Packard computer for a centralized system. Wyatt chose the Datapoint machine, he said, in part because he believed the distributed system better fit into budgetarily decentralized Harvard. The Datapoint machine also afforded greater privacy, he added, and it could be leased, unlike the purchase-only Hewlett Packard. Wyatt also said that Datapoint "is looking quite good now," and that Harvard is considering taking out a long-term lease on it.

In a previous interview, Brown-Beasley painted a different picture of the OIT staff recommendations, charging that the staff group had proposed the Hewlett Packard machine and had been surprised by Wyatt's choice of the Datapoint hardware. Brown-Beasley argued that the Datapoint machine can be matched or bettered by the Hewlett-Packard and several others considered in the study.

The OIT study, obtained by The Crimson after the Wyatt interview with the approval of Wyatt and Ciannavei, appears to bear out Brown-Beasley's scenario: The report concludes that after a month's study the Hewlett-Packard machines is best for the payroll system, adding, "We have been very impressed with the quality and professionalism of their company's activities." There is no apparent discussion of centralized vs. distributive systems, and security is not one of the eight systems requirements listed.

Ciannavei and Robert A. Carroll, manager of systems and operations in the OIT computing center and head of the group that conducted the study, said last week that Wyatt chose the Datapoint machine after receiving promises of a systems software innovation whose availability was discussed in the report: "Our overall feeling about this system is that with the addition of the 5500 processor, it would be quite adequate to do the presently-defined task in Payroll. However, this system's capability to accommodate more terminals or additional processing functions gracefully would be in question."

Although Carroll said that "with all the input he (Wyatt) had, I concurred with his choice," an official at Hewlett-Packard involved in the payroll proposal said last week that Carroll and other members of the evaluating group had been "disappointed" by the decision. The official said that the company had received what was practically a letter of intent and was going to make the hardware order "momentarily" when it learned that Wyatt "virtually put forth an edict which declared a unilateral decision." Wyatt later explained to Hewlett-Packard, the official said, that although its machine had the necessary capability, which the Datapoint machine outline did not, he believed he could "make it do the job"--which the Hewlet-Packard official would require an efficiency rate of more than 100 per cent. An attempt to obtain Wyatt's additional comments on these claims was unsuccessful.

Carroll also said last week that Hewlett Packard had not felt it had been "done in." However, the Hewlett-Packard official contradicted this, declaring, "We were shocked, frankly." Carroll also denied that the Texas base of Datapoint had been an element in its choice by Wyatt, who was born in Texas and lived there until coming to work for Harvard.

I.D. cards and NAMAD

Brown-Beasley's allegations also include criticism of Gibson's decision to issue bursars cards last year to faculty members and other University officers with validation dates of October 1980. Because they were produced and then mailed through an outdated list, some of the so-called 10-80s were mailed to persons who had left the University the preceeding spring, such as Neiman Fellows. In addition, the five-year cards went to some who will leave the University before 1980, such as teaching fellows.

The difficulties raised by the mailing, which The Crimson revealed last fall, aroused representatives of Harvard's libraries, who feared that invalid cards would be used to remove books fraudulently. In his appeal document, Brown-Beasley wrote, "As an irreligious (negligent, careless, indifferent, lax) person as far as the bulk of your responsibilities in Fiscal Services goes, you've most likely never asked anyone at the libraries just what that particular irreligiosity...is going to cost us, but I did ask. And do you know what I was told? It will be years before the full impact can be assessed, if indeed ever."

Brown-Beasley also contends that the NAMAD retrieval system being developed to allow Fiscal Services faster access to records on students, employees and alumni is over a month and a half late. He also questions the work of OIT analyst Shostack on the system, alleging that his testing is an expensive waste of time. It was an August 3 disagreement between the two men, who worked together when Brown-Beasley was at OIT, that led to Brown-Beasley's dismissal.

The grievance procedure

Brown-Beasley's case is further complicated by several procedural questions he has raised about his dismissal and appeal. For one, he argues that Gibson violated regulations in the personnel manual that call for "progressive" discipline of employees, including a warning letter before suspension and a suspension before discharge. One section also reads: "An employee should not be disciplined or discharged in haste or anger. If a serious incident occurs which may warrant discharge, the employee should be suspended pending investigation."

Gibson apparently did not follow these steps in disciplining Brown-Beasley, who received neither a warning letter nor a suspension. However, Edward W. Powers, associate general counsel for employee relations, called attention last week to another clause in the manual that permits "discharge without prior warning or suspension" in the case of "very serious offenses, for example, serious dishonesty, including theft of University1