The SFJB is composed of six students--four undergraduates picked by lot and two graduate--as well as six faculty members and a chair chosen by the dean of the Faculty.

Current students on the board say that the administration expects that the SFJB board will meet rarely, if at all.

"When I agreed to join the board, I was told that the thing never meets," said Jeremy M. Friedman '98, one of the student members.

Another member, Crimson editor Christopher M. Luo '98, said that although he's heard of the SFJB, he has "no idea what the heck it is."

The administration's casual attitude towards the board led the Civil Liberties Union of Harvard (CLUH) to argue that the SFJB was underutilized in a 1993 report critiquing the entire Ad Board process.

In particular, the report cited a lack of proper advising by senior tutors and first-year deans.

"Given that only one in five hundred potential cases has gone to the SFJB, CLUH believes that [advisers] could not possibly be explaining the SFJB to students," according to the report.

While students are supposed to sign a form in which they formally select one body over the other, at least one student said his case was tried before the Ad Board without him having ever signed such a form.

Another student, who ultimately decided to apply to the SFJB but was rejected, said he was only presented with the SFJB option on the day before his scheduled Ad Board hearing.

Leniency?

Defenders of the process say that student's do not choose the SFJB because fellow students are actually harsher in judging their peers.

"In our experience, students when actually confronted with some wrong-doing do not regard the opportunity to be judged by students...to be an incentive," says Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68.

The main reason provided by senior tutors for the lack of usage of the SFJB is the simple lack of precedent-setting cases.

"I have yet to encounter a case with a student that hasn't happened before," said Lowell House Allston Burr Senior Tutor Eugene C. McAfee.

Lewis says he thinks there have been a relatively small number of cases where students have considered using the SFJB.

Senior tutors say students are usually better off using the Ad Board because it provides confidentiality and a punishment based on past precedent.

"You can judge the relative severity of things over time," said Mather House Allston Burr Senior Tutor Mary K. Peckham