After a series of inaccurate pronouncements and misunderstood e-mails exchanged with a top administrator of Harvard Summer School, Harvard Student Agencies (HSA) officers said yesterday that they would no longer allow any individuals taking Summer School classes to enroll in their popular bartending course.

Christopher Queen, dean of students for Harvard Summer School, decided to withdraw permission for HSA to market its course on campus after one family expressed concerns about advertising a alcohol-oriented class to an audience composed largely of minors.

He also denied HSA the right to enroll any Summer School students—a prohibition with which HSA officers said they initially agreed to comply because they thought Queen’s request did not encompass Harvard undergraduates taking summer courses.

Several clarifications of the term “Summer School students” ensued before HSA officers told The Crimson yesterday that they would, in fact, meet both of Queen’s terms.

Following an initial round of e-mail correspondence about the course, Queen sent an e-mail to Summer School proctors on June 29 announcing that the bartending class had been entirely cancelled for the summer at his request.

“Harvard Student Agencies has agreed to discontinue the Harvard Bartending Course this summer as a result of complaints that the course was incompatible with the Summer School’s strict policies regarding alcohol for Secondary School Students,” Queen wrote at the time.

But HSA President Abhishek Gupta ’04 and Vice-President Anthony Ekmekjian ’04 said yesterday that the course was not cancelled—nor had it ever been.

“There was some misunderstanding on both sides,” Ekmekjian wrote in an e-mail. “The course itself was not cancelled.”

Queen pointed out yesterday that a cancellation of the course would not have been within his reach.

“Harvard Summer School doesn’t have any legal authority to close a program offered by HSA,” he said.

But Queen had already exercised some power over the bartending course. In an e-mail dated June 24, he withdrew permission for HSA to advertise the bartending course on campus.

That decision still stands, Gupta and Ekmekjian said, and was complied with immediately.

But, they said, definitional confusion in another part of the June 24 e-mail led Queen to declare the bartending class dead prematurely.

Queen’s message also denied permission for HSA to enroll Summer School students in the summer bartending course.

Gupta wrote back to Queen on June 25, assenting to the request in no uncertain terms.