Many guards say they would have liked to take advantage of the opportunity to have a representative accompany them, but by the time of the interview, it was too late.

Marshall's letter had made no mention of any interviewer other than Ring, although she told The Crimson in January that Choate lawyer A. Hugh Scott would participate in the investigation. Scott has had no visible role in the probe to this point.

Although Marshall's letter to guards asking them to participate in interviews reads as an urgent appeal for evidence. Ring himself was reportedly curt with several guards and former guards who phoned him to request an interview. It is unclear if everyone who wanted to be interviewed was, in fact, questioned.

Marshall, Ring and Cartotto have all refused to comment for the duration of the investigation.

President Neil L. Rudenstine, who initiated the investigation with public statements he made last October, has said he is content with the deliberate pace chosen by Marshall.

"In any case where there is a question of fairness to people, potential legal action and so on, you want to move ahead with expeditiousness," Rudenstine said in a May interview. "At the same time, you want to move ahead as fairly and carefully as possible, so that you really are being fair to everyone. [Margaret Marshall] has been at it, and will stay at it until it's done."

In fact, the investigation's slow pace may be by design. In her first interview with The Crimson after taking over as general counsel in November, Marshall said she would move with "deliberate caution" on the guard issue.

But the landscape of the controversy has changed since Marshall launched her investigation in January.

One of the guards who charged discrimination was fired. The guard, a Russian citizen who has asked that his name not be used, was involved in a scuffle in the security office.

While an internal police investigation was not completely conclusive as to whom had instigated the incident, Police Chief Paul E. Johnson found the Russian guard at fault and terminated him. Rudenstine said in an interview that the guard could be reinstated, but only at the end of the investigation.

And in the spring, two Black men who had spent time as supervisors in the security department, current security supervisor Andrew J. Parker and Harvard police Sgt. Arthur Fitzhugh, said they had been treated unfairly by department officials. Their charges, like those of the other security employees, have been denied by Manager of Operations for Security Robert J. Dowling.

Many guards say the statements made by Parker, who is generally well liked and respected throughout the unit, carry weight with them. Parker was interviewed by Ring, while Fitzhugh and Harvard Sgt. Robert Sutherland, another former security supervisor, were not.

Police Chief Paul E. Johnson has been interviewed as part of the probe, but he may not even be part of the department when the investigation is finally concluded. Johnson, who has talked privately of retiring at the end of this year, is seriously ill, and Lt. Lawrence J. Murphy has replaced him as officer-in-charge of the police department.

Even six months later, the allegations of harassment continue. Last week, guard Pierre R. Voss was taken to the hospital after falling on a flight of stairs during his shift. Voss, who had just returned to work after a back injury, says he was wrongly assigned to an extremely arduous shift. Dowling denies the charge, saying the shift is no more difficult than any other.

The sheer length of the investigation seems to have derailed any potential it had for heading off legal action by some guards.