According to former overseer George B. Bingham Sr. '28, who served two terms on the Board, the most recent change of the governing body has been this reinvigoration of the visiting committee process. "Before, [their reports] were being filed and forgotten," Bingham says.

"Some overseers when I was there were rather exasperated that they were lectured to, and had little impact in decisions--that has changed," Burr says. The visiting committees allow overseers some input into the government of the University they dominated centuries earlier.

The fallout of 1969 also greatly expanded a transformation in the composition of the overseers that had been underway for the past century. The Board saw a dramatic growth in the traditional outsiders among its ranks--non-Bostonians, minorities, and the Board's first woman, Helen H. Gilbert '36, who joined the body in 1969.

The final episode of this reevaluation was the Gilbert Report of 1978 which recommended against the proposed dissolution of the Board--a residual suggestion from the late Pusey years that the Boards be merged into one.

The present government system continues with the age-old bicameral tradition with clearly defined spheres for each of the bodies.

The Corporation's present function is largely dedicated toward financial matters and to milling the grist submitted to them by the various faculties. Few innovations come from the Corporation's twice-monthly meetings.

"Even matters like tuition are pretty cut and dried when they come before the Corporation," notes former ex officio member George Putnam Jr. '49.

The Corporation in recent months has considered everything from the impact of the new tax plan on longterm giving to the budgetary needs of Harvard's Villa I Tatti in Italy, which has been buffetted by an inflated lire.

Overseers, by contrast, are primarily responsible for departmental visitation and participation in the selection of Corporation members and the President. The Board also acts in an "advice and consent" capacity with regard to the Corporation--a role stemming from its original charter that in practice is rarely one of veto power.

The oversight is in reality more subtle, say veterans of the process. "The Corporation's knowledge that this group of 30 people is watching over their shoulder will prevent them from doing anything silly," says former President Pusey.

An often unstated role is that of training ground for the Harvard Corporation. Heiskell and fellow overseer Colman M. Mockler Jr. '52 were each one-time Presidents of the Overseers.

Although the Board has gone well beyond its rubber stamp function of a decade ago, the Board's role clearly falls well short of that of a century or even of forty years ago. And while some tenure appointments have been assailed by the Board, overseers say, real challenges are very infrequent. Most tenure cases are decided in a joint Overseers-Corporation committee, whose staff flags problematic cases.

Some now seek a return to more overseer input into governing the University. This push comes largely as an outgrowth of the recent challenge to the Board by pro-divestment candidates who want the body to address larger issues of social responsibility. As the democratic arm of the governance system, they say, the overseers have a responsibility to take a larger role.

But in a recent interview Bok said he did not envision any future expansion. "I don't see them taking a larger role. I don't see anything on the horizon that is a direction the overseers want to move in."

Moreover, while some say overseers power has declined, they add that it need not be enlarged. "Their role is not really a role of power, but it's a role of providing information and advice," says former Overseer T. Jefferson Coolidge '54, a local financier. "In terms of the original intent of the overseers, they don't have enough power to do the original job, but they probably have all the power they can handle given the limited time they have."

In any case, the overseers are surely no longer the bored boardmembers of yore. Says Young: "It's not just wearing a tie and tails and waiting for someone to deliver the Marshall Plan."