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;