Harvard's Administrative Board has the strengths--but not the safeguards--of a court of law.

For example, when a student makes allegations of rape against another student, the Ad Board, like a court of law, collects evidence and testimony, weighing the facts of the case.

NEWS ANALYSIS

Then, again like a court of law, the Ad Board has the power to brand a student as a rapist and mete out what it deems appropriate punishment.

But, unlike a court of law, it does not allow both sides to question each other, prohibits lawyers from attending its proceedings and places students before a jury of administrators only, not peers.

Because the Ad Board omits these features from its proceedings, legal experts and other schools around the country say Harvard is out of step with higher education in general--and as a result, students sometimes miss out on the chance to get the fairest hearing possible.

"In terms of questions of fair procedures, I actually have not found a school that's worse than Harvard," says Harvey A. Silverglate, a lawyer with the Boston firm Silverglate & Good, who has researched similar procedures at over 400 schools. “It isn’t a rational procedure calculated to uncover truth."

"It's right out of Orwell," he adds. "No union would tolerate having an employee facing discipline in the way Harvard does it."

Ad Board administrators balk at using legal terms to describe their process. They say they seek to educate as well as to punish.

This model was tested last spring, when two undergraduate women charged undergraduate men with rape and sexual assault. Both cases came before the Ad Board, and in both instances it ruled that rape had occurred, according to Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68.

In addition, both men, Joshua M. Elster, Class of 2000, and D. Drew Douglas, also Class of 2000, pled guilty in Middlesex County Court to charges of indecent assault (Not Clear Data) and battery and, in Elster's case, rape. Both were sentenced to probation.

The Ad Board asked the students to withdraw and has made recommendations of dismissal to the full Faculty, which has yet to vote on a punishment.

The women assaulted by Douglas spoke publicly last month for the first time about her criticisms of the Ad Board process. She said she felt the Ad Board betrayed her in its failure to recommend expulsion--which, unlike dismissal, is permanent.

"The [Ad Board] system doesn't work. It is flawed. It is archaic and it is not made to deal with cases of sexual assault,"she wrote then in an e-mail message. She says shetook her case to court after the Ad Board failedto adequately punish her attacker.

Part of the Educational Experience

At Harvard, even disciplinary hearings aredesigned to educate, according to administrators.They say the Ad Board proceedings provide a chanceto examine wrongdoing. "There's a punitivecomponent, but it's really designed to beeducational," Lewis told The Crimson last spring.