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 Because they were produced and then mailed through an outdated list, some of the so-called 10-80s were mailed to persons who had left the University the preceeding spring, such as Neiman Fellows.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 University