The reason the ACSR was able to come to a unanimous or near unanimous position on the vast majority of the proxies it reviewed was that the resolutions usually presented us with a ridiculously easy choice to make. The Corporation only differed with the ACSR in matters where a real choice was to be made.

HEART OF THE MATTER

In the four cases where the Corporation and the ACSR were at odds over a proxy vote last year, the ACSR wanted to hold the company in question to more rigorous ethical standards and greater public scrutiny than the Harvard Corporation was willing to go along with Whenever a tough issue arose and Corporation members disagreed with the ACSR's interpretation of a resolution, they disregarded out carefully considered recommendation and voted as they liked.

If the ACSR's function as an advisory panel on proxy resolutions is largely unnecessary, as it appears to be then its work on Harvard's South Africa policy represents an area in which the Committee conducts real research and provides a valuable counseling service to the University. However, the South Africa question is very complex and fraught with emotional reactions. It is also the most enduring and important moral and political dilemma to have faced the University in recent years. Under the circumstances, it is imperative that President Bok and the Corporation take every necessary step to insure the impartiality and legitimacy of their advisory body in the eyes of the public. The President and the Corporation have failed to fulfill this responsibility in recent years.

GUIDELINES

The closest things to a charter that the ACSR has is included in the Financial Report's 10-years review of the Committee. According to this Constitution ACSR members are supposed to be selected in the following way: students are elected or appointed by the student government mechanisms within the college the various graduate selected: alumni are nominated by the president of the Alumni Association: and professors are nominated by the president of the various faculties. The President has the final say in all alumni and faculty appointments.

These rules governing: ACSR selection appear to have been applied in a slipshod manner at least in recent years.

Two of the four student members last year's ACSR reported that they had been appointed by the Dean's office of their respective graduate schools. In the case of the Business School students representative, the Dean by passed the recognized Students Association and approached the student directly, without even advertising to see in other students might be interested. While several of the graduate schools do not have formal "student government mechanisms," almost all have some kind of student association through which interested students should be solicited.

The guidelines for alumni selection to the ACSR appear to have been completely disregarded. Presumably, the ACSR charter specified that alumni nominations be made according to certain "criteria" in order to guarantee that alumni be fairly selected and represent the full range of perspective and experience existent among Harvard alumni ae.

After trying to determine the content of these criteria, I must concur with the conclusion reached last year by Undergraduate Council Chairman Brian R. Melendez '86, who conducted extensive research on this same question, the "These criteria may exist on paper, but certainly not in practice."

IRREGULARITIES

The guidelines governing selection to the ACSR specify that seats on the ACSR are always to be reserved for one student from the college and one professor from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The charter sets forth a system by which the other student and faculty positions are to be rotated among the various graduate schools. All ACSR appointments are for two-year terms.

However, President Bok has not followed the rotation schedule properly in making recent appointments. At the end of last year, four members left the ACSR because their two-year terms had expired Four others resigned after completing only one year because they either left Harvard or, like myself, were no longer interested in serving on the Committee.

President Bok's appointments to replace two of the other three mid term departures are in violation of the rotation schedule laid out in the ACSR charter. The Business School student who resigned from the Committee because he graduate should have been replaced this year by a student from the same school. Instead, a law student is taking this seat.

Likewise, the Law School professor who served as Chairman of the ACSR for one year should have been succeeded by another law professor who would have completed that School's two-years faculty slot on the Committee. The law faculty position is currently being held by a professor from the Business School.