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.