Staggered like the old Burma Shave signs, the placards produced by the Connecticut safe driving campaign read: The Careful Driver (first sign), Never Meets (second sign), Our Unmarked Patrol Cars (third sign).

In much the same manner, the cautious Harvard undergraduate never meets the Administrative Board.

The "Ad Board," as it is called by its members, is a multifunctional committee of the Faculty which hands out highest honors, interprets University regulations, approves leaves of absence, allows students to add or drop courses, and serves as the high court of the College.

Few students, however, have heard of the 16-man committee which meets on the top floor of Holyoke Center every Tuesday afternoon. The members of the Board are a tight-lipped crew who rarely speak of their disciplinary duties for fear of spreading rumors. In fact, the vows of silence have been so religiously observed that no student really knows the law of the land until it is applied to his case.

The Old Board

From 1900 to 1952, the Administrative Board was a small group of elderly deans and professors which passed judgment on disciplinary cases with advice from the "Chapter"--a number of baby deans who pleaded for mitigated sentences. Edward T. Wilcox, director of Advanced Standing and the Freshmen Seminar Program, recounts how he and other baby deans would make penny-bets on a case's outcome and then would go out and celebrate the ones they had "won"--for those students either let off or given light punishments.

The structure and tone of the Board changed after the Korean War when the Allston Burr Senior Tutor system was instituted. The Board expanded to almost twice its original size, and the advisory Chapter, along with the Senior Tutors, became part of it. Once a small strict group of old-time administrators, the reorganized Board became both younger and more lenient.

The addition of Senior Tutors to the Board has had perhaps a greater impact on Harvard's handling of student disciplinary problems than any other recent reform. Senior Tutors, the members of the Board in closest contact with the students, have the difficult task of acting as both defender and judge simultaneously. In the old days, Wilcox explains, the baby deans just presented the facts to a "group of neutrals." "Since we didn't have a vote on the Board, we didn't carry any of the responsibility for the decision. The law was very clear, and if you believed in a student, your only job was to try to save him," Wilcox said.

One of the questions the Board has been considering for the last few years is whether a student should be allowed to appear and speak in his own defense. Almost all Board members agree that although this would make the system appear more just and open-minded, in practice it would only make it less flexible.

A Senior Tutor is apt to be able to present a student's case in a much more sympathetic light than is the student himself, the argument runs. Knowing the precedents and the acceptable arguments, the Senior Tutor is in the best position to present the most palatable defense. The student, on the other hand, would be likely to plead instead of argue--a tactic which could only antagonize the members of the Board. Furthermore, Dean Watson argues that if a student were brought before the Board he would be "subject to a number of embarrassing questions which might otherwise be over-looked."

A case is almost never brought to the Board unless the guilt is already clear. This means that almost any argument about not having done it becomes irrelevant. The only discussion before the Board, Wilcox says, "is why not to do what the rules say." Almost every case which is brought before the Board has some kind of extenuating circumstances, thus the committee can best be described as the "Board of Exceptions."

Furthermore, if you let a student appear before the Board, all sorts of complications arise. Should he be allowed to bring witnesses, a lawyer, a jury of peers, petitions, weeping mothers, and his constitutional rights? As one member of the Board put it, these suggestions become less and less far-fetched as the consequences of being thrown out of college become a certain ticket to the Army.

Built to Work

But the Administrative Board was not designed to appear to be a paragon of justice. It was built to work. Monro insists that the Ad Board should not be allowed to become an adversary process, but rather should remain a private review Board (as opposed to a public trial) which can consult confidential background material before reaching a decision.

There are complaints (any punitive system is bound to be maligned by those it touches) that sometimes a Senior Tutor simply doesn't like the boy he is supposed to be defending. When such cases arise, another member of the Board will often rise to the student's defense if he feels there is a personality clash. But the problem nonetheless remains one of the most convicing arguments against the present system--shouldn't a student be allowed to defend himself when he thinks his Senior Tutor will distort his case? Last year Monro decided that in special cases where the student is convinced the Ad Board has the wrong information, a special subcommittee will be appointed to listen to the student's grievance. But in the last three years, Monro adds, no case has warranted a hearing. As it stands now, a student is asked to submit a written statement about his case to the whole Board, but this provision does not allow the student the possibility of rebuttal.