Divestment advocates turned their attention and activity toward the Board of Overseers this year only to discover that the democratic governing body--elected by the University's alumni--makes its decisions behind yet another set of closed doors.

A proposal asking Harvard to divest from its stocks in all companies doing business in South Africa reached the floor of the Board in December, was diverted to a committee meeting in February, and prompted the creation of an unprecedented joint panel composed of overseers and members of the seven-man Corporation in April. The Board has yet to vote on the proposal itself.

And with the creation of that special committee, the Board will not vote on divestment for at least year.

The series of maneuvers to avoid an Overseers' vote on divestment has in many ways demonstrated the wide gap between the University community--whether student protesters, faculty dissenters or overseers--and the inner core that makes most major policy decisions. The gap is especially evident to those divestment activists who hoped to use positions on the Board of Overseers to force the University to sell its South Africa holdings.

"There have been several major issues going on on campus this year in which the decision rested with the president or the [Overseers] Executive Committee, and these have revealed in some ways the way in which power is centralized in the University," said Overseer Gay W. Seidman '73, who was elected on an alternative slate of pro-divestment candidates.

"Nothing has changed," she said, "it is just more obvious how little the administration is responsible to anyone outside a very small group."

Beginning three years ago, Harvard-Radcliffe Alumni Against Apartheid (AAA) used petitions to offer candidates against the traditional University-sponsored slate of 10; five overseers are elected each year, for six-year terms. Seidman was elected in 1986. Last year, Peter H. Wood '64 and Consuela M. Washington of the HRAAA slate joined Seidman on the Board.

In a much-anticipated move, Wood presented a proposal calling for total divestment at the Board's December meeting. After the meeting, Board President Samuel C. Butler '51 said that the Overseers would likely consider the proposal for total divestment at the February meeting.

The idea of a direct vote on divestment met with strong disapproval from several overseers, administrators and members of the Corporation--the body which sets the University's investment policy--who said that an unsolicited recommendation to the Corporation from the Board was improper.

This question about the propriety of an independent Overseers vote on divestment is but the latest phase of a continuing discussion about how Harvard is governed. (Technically, every action of the Corporation must be approved by the Overseers, although in recent memory the Board has acted as a rubber-stamp body.)

Vice President and General Counsel Daniel Steiner '54 and Secretary to the Governing Boards Robert Shenton flew around the country in the months before the vote--visiting nearly 20 of the 30 overseers--to raise their concerns with a direct vote on the issue and to propose possible alternatives. The agenda for the February meeting, set by the Executive Committee of the Overseers, did not include a vote.

Instead the Board charged one of the body's permanent committees to decide how the Overseers should consider the question of divestment. In March, the standing committee decided that board members should present their views at the April meeting of the Board but not take a vote--formal or informal.

According to board members present at the meeting, although most overseers participated in the discussion there was no consensus reached on how the Board should act. The University currently practices "selective divestment," handling each investment on a case-by-case basis. Harvard has approximately $200 million invested in companies that do business with South Africa.

In addition, the Board's Standing Committee on Institutional Policy recommended to the full Board that a special panel be formed of Corporation members and overseers to investigate the issues raised by divestment and report back to each of the governing bodies.

After the Board agreed to these recommendations in April, Butler said that he would accept nominations for the joint committee; although the Executive Committee--chaired by Butler--retained ultimate decision-making authority. The three petition candidates nominated each other and Overseer Gerald E. Thomas '51, a visiting scholar in the Southern Africa department at Yale University.