Charging that Harvard "may have obstructed a criminal investigation," the Cambridge City Council passed an ordinance Monday night requiring University administrators to attend a meeting with top city and police officials to discuss their conduct during a stalking incident this summer.
The council voted 9-0 to require the University administration to confer with City Manager Robert W. Healy and four top level Cambridge police officials over proper procedures in future stalking and domestic violence incidents.
The Crimson reported last month that University administrators repeatedly failed to cooperate with a police search for a male 17-year-old summer school student who had threatened to kill a female summer school student.
The boy, whose identity is being kept secret by police because of his age, was later arrested and arraigned on stalking and threatening charges.
The ordinance, authored by Councillor Michael A. Sullivan, was passed without debate or discussion by the nine-member council.
"The purpose of the order is to assist Harvard in the most productive manner possible to know about stalking laws and domestic violence," Sullivan said yesterday.
The order, which was included in a larger consent-order package, also requested that City Manager Robert W. Healy prepare a training program on domestic violence which administrators from all colleges and high schools in Cambridge will be required to attend.
Sullivan said he decided to write the ordinance after reading an October 5 article by Boston Globe columnist Bella English. She commented on the findings of a September 12 story in The Crimson.
In a statement issued last night, the University defended its actions in the stalking case.
"Harvard administrators acted appropriately and responsively by referring the incident to the police," Joe Wrinn, acting director of the Harvard office of news and public affairs, said in the statement. While Wrinn said the University will comply with the ordinance, he declined to say which administration representatives will be sent to the meeting, or what topics Harvard might like to discuss. "We have not heard from the city council yet," Wrinn said in an interview last night. "I would not want to speculate on what they might have in mind." But Sullivan remained critical of Harvard's treatment of the incident. "It appears from the story that an administrator was doing everything to prevent the police from doing their job," Sullivan said. "They weren't going to tell University police where the student was, which was providing problems for the security of the victim." "I was concerned by the actions of as administrator whether there is a campus policy on not doing anything about it," he said. Lowell House Master William H. Bossert, the ranking University official at the time of the incident, was one of the administrators who kept the victim's location from the police. He refused to comment on the case yesterday. Read more in News