If some Harvard administrators have their way, your local Harvard Club will soon be more than just a place to go sip sherry with the boys.

Frustrated with the high visibility of the campaign to elect South African Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu to the Board of Overseers, Harvard officials--themselves bound by a pledge of neutrality--have placed the political battle over University governance in the hands of the Harvard Alumni Assocation.

Specifically, administrators last month named two outspoken critics of Harvard-Radcliffe Alumni Against Apartheid (HRAAA), the pro-divestment group which nominated Tutu, to head the umbrella organization which ostensibly represents all alumni.

And although many alumni sympathetic to HRAAA have cried foul at the apparent politicization of the once-neutral Alumni Association, the group's new leaders say they're prepared to pull out all the stops to keep the divestment candidates off the Board.

University officials have long said HRAAA has unfairly defined the overseer campaign solely in terms of Harvard's $163.8 million in South Africa-related investments--an issue administrators say is not particularly important to the Board.

Top administrators, including President Derek C. Bok, have often warned that electing a Board of "single-issue candidates" would hurt the Overseers' effectiveness as an academic and financial advisory body. And this year, officials such as Vice President for Alumni Affairs Fred L. Glimp '50 are saying somebody has to take a stand and "educate" the electorate.

"We have a responsibility to produce a slate of candidates and to try to explain to the electorate what's going on," Glimp says. "It's probably not only our right but our obligation to do something if we don't think the issues are being addressed."

But Bok and Glimp have encountered public backlash whenever they have entered the political fray. This April, when Glimp helped Stanford University President Donald Kennedy '52 publish an advertisement in Harvard Magazine warning alumni not to support "single-issue candidates," he was widely criticized.

So when those officials were looking for a way to counter the HRAAA campaign, they turned to the Alumni Association, the organization which nominates the University's "official" slate of overseer candidates.

While Alumni Association officials have generally discouraged campaigning, they said they could not prohibit individuals from taking stands when the other side was waging such an effort.

"Campaigning has always been discouraged, but you can't prohibit it absolutely," says Glimp. "That's just not feasible. We can't tell people they can't campaign. You can't do it even if you think the election could be run better [without it]."

Thus, when it came time to select a new president and executive director for the group in May, Glimp and other top administrators tapped two alumni whose contempt for HRAAA was already a matter of public record.

The new president, Charles J. Egan '54, once likened HRAAA's tactics to McCarthyism, calling the campaign a personal effort by HRAAA Executive Director Robert P. Wolff '54 to "float his own social agenda."

And newly appointed Alumni Association Executive Director John P. Reardon '60 this February delivered a long attack on HRAAA at an Alumni Association meeting, asking, "What's to keep them from nominating Fidel Castro next time?"

Neither has been shy about his opposition to the HRAAA since their appointments to the alumni posts.