TALK BOK TO ME

Just as undergraduates packed their bags and left for the summer, President Derek C. Bok announced that he will step down from Harvard's presidency at the end of this academic year. As the summer began, Harvard administrators, faculty, and bureaucrats of all sorts began the process of selecting the person who will hold what is arguably the most influential position in American education.

The Corporation, Harvard's premiere governing body, quickly named a search committee charged with producing a list of candidates qualified to be the University's next president. The Corporation named six of its seven members--Bok excluded--to the committee, along with three members of the Board of Overseers. The search committee/Corporation will recommend a short list to the Corporation proper, which will then choose the next president, who will, by the way, then serve on the Corporation.

Although Bok stressed that Harvard needed a new president to mastermind an upcoming $2.5 billion fund drive, his resignation dashed hopes for its speedy start. University officials said the Bok resignation would likely delay the beginning of the drive for up to a year.

Bok's resignation will mean more than a new occupant of a certain prestigious Mass Hall office--it will also mean a reorganization of Harvard's administrative governance. Traditionally, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has been considered the second most influential administrator at Harvard.

But under a new plan, the president could appoint a Provost, who would take up many of the dean's academic duties. The Dean of FAS will then be able to focus on fundraising--something former Dean A. Michael Spence found was consuming disproportionate amounts of time.

As soon as Bok announced his resignation, self-annointed Harvard pundits were immediately predicting the ascension of Henry Rosovsky, who is former Dean of the Faculty and member of both the Corporation and the Corporation/search committee. But Roso fans were shocked and disappointed when King Henry said he would not accept the presidency in a Shermanesque announcement.

Alarmed by the prospect of a studentless search, outgoing Undergraduate Council chair Guhan Subramanian '92 out in his two cents, sending a letter to Corporation member/search committee chair Charles P. Slichter '46 urging him to solicit student opinion in selecting a new president. University officials said that Slichter was indeed planning to seek student input, but that it would not be as important as Subramanian hoped it would.

EC 10 FOR ECUADOR

In a complicated deal that confused nearly everybody, Harvard agreed this summer to trade "debt for scholarship" with the Ecuadoran government. Harvard will apparently purchase Latin American country's $5 million national debt and convert it into a $2.5 million scholarship fund for Ecuadoran students studying at Harvard. Somehow, the University ends up reaping a $1.7 million dollar windfall from the deal, thus advancing its efforts to "internationalize" in the process.

BE CAREFUL OUT THERE

A man approached two students enrolled in the summer school's secondary school program and engaged them in a conversation, suggesting that he could help them gain admission to Harvard College. He later asked them to dinner and, according to a flier distributed to students, "served them large quantities of alcohol, brought them back to his apartment and engaged them in sex against their will."

Police say they will arraign a suspect on Sept. 13, but he is still at large.

YES, MASTER

This year, two house masters will be taking leaves of absence. Through some uncanny coincidence, both are being replaced by zoology experts. Adams House Master Robert Kiely will be replaced for the year by Eva S. Jones, head librarian at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ). And while James A. Davis is away, Robert M. Woollacott, curator of marine invertebrates at the MCZ will be running the show at Winthrop House.