The committee--chosen at the beginning of May--does not include any of the four, prompting the petition candidates to charge that the Executive Committee was not receptive to their suggestions. Butler responded by saying he did not think the petition candidates--or Thomas, who favors divestment--were in a position to take a fresh look at the issue.

On the question of divestment, the five overseers on the joint committee--who will be joined by three Corporation members--roughly break down to two in favor of divestment, and three opposed, according to Butler. The Corporation members all oppose divestment.

Though divestment activists were disappointed by the composition of the committee, they hope that it will decide in favor of divestment. "Even though I am a little skeptical about the purpose and membership of the committee, it can do some good," said HRAAA Executive Director Dorothee E. Benz '87. "Who knows? Maybe they will even make the decision finally to divest."

Recently, ativists have sought access to the committee. Seidman, who is a sociology doctoral candidate researching a dissertation on South Africa, said she hoped that either she or Thomas would have the opportunity to make a presentation to the joint committee. Seidman said if they were not invited, the panel should hear from South African exiles. "It's upsetting to me that there's no one on the committee who knows anything about South Africa or about the region. They're going to have to learn a lot of basic things."

Several of the divestment overseers and activists on campus are also pushing for the joint committee to hold open hearings on campus. Noah M. Berger '89 said that he and other members of the South African Solidarity Committee (SASC) wrote a letter two weeks ago to Geyser University Professor Henry Rosovsky, the Corporation co-chair of the joint committee.

In a written response to SASC, Rosovsky refused to meet personally with the students or to discuss their demands, but said he would forward their letter to the full committee when it next met. Berger said that his organization would contnue to push for access to the joint committee if it failed to act on the letter.

The difficulties in having the Board vote directly on divestment has prompted the petition candidates themselves to look for more long-term means of opening up Harvard's method of governace. Seidman said that she is disturbed by the power of the nine-member Executive Committee, which sets the agenda for meetings and makes special decisions such as choosing the membership for the joint committee.

The Executive Committee is made up of the president of the Board and the chairmen of the standing committees, who are chosen by the president and the other committee members. There is no real opportunity to nominate new members to the committee, Seidman said, adding that she thought this process leads to a closed committee with few women and minorities.

Overseer Jane C. Bradley '49, the only woman currently serving on the Executive Committee, said having that key committee reflect the ratioes of the Board as a whole is an important long-term goal. "I think that the University is quite considerate of women and minorities in every decision it makes, but you have to keep pushing," she said.

The Executive Committee also does not include any overseers who have publicly expressed support for the divestment movement. The committee's agreement on divestment is made more striking as the Board becomes more preoccupied by Harvard's links to South Africa.

"As the number of overseers with dissenting opinions is increasing, the decision not to include them is becoming more obvious," said one overseer, who asked not to be identified.

Wood said that not only the Executive Committee but the entire Board should be more open. The Gilbert Committee on the Structure and Function of the Board of Overseers, which met in 1978 and wrote that the role of the Overseers was to reflect "the considered judgements of an enlightened society."

But the reality does not meet this ideal in Wood's view. "Meeting with these people is like riding through the peasantry of Paris, going to Versailles and sitting down with a group of courtiers who are not in touch with the commoners," he said.

Wood stressed that a more open Board would not be contrary to the basic principles under which it was created. "There is no real reason to be so closed as to be really out of touch," he said. "There is nothing that precludes us from taking votes, nothing that says that the minutes of the meeting can't be public."

The problem of a closed Board could be changed by an increase in the electorate, Wood said. Currently only about 25 percent of the alumni vote in Overseer elections. If this percentage were increased, Wood said, it would make the Board more liberal and would give the overseers a feeling of resposibility to the community as a whole.

"I'm sure that there are hundreds of potential voters who are alienated to the right, but for every one of these there's got to be 10 to the left," Wood said. "Now the candidates are primarily nominated from within the University, and they feel no real responsibility to the outside community. They are filled with gratitude rather than responsibility."