“There was really absolutely no reason for them to think that the resident deans had any responsibility” for the public outing of Casey and Curry, Howell said.

Even as Hammonds humbled herself before the faculty on April 2, she defended her decision to protect student confidentiality and the integrity of the Ad Board at all costs.

“Indeed, had we not sought to discover the source of the exposure, and further information was released, I would now be standing here trying to explain why we did not take action,” she said.

But she closed her remarks, her last before the assembled faculty, on a more conciliatory note. Evoking the image of her own young son, she reminded her colleagues that she approached her duties not just as an administrator, but as a parent as well.

“I stand before you as parent of a 10-year old boy who I am raising to what I hope will be a good man,” she said.

“I always tell our son how important it is to own up to your mistakes, to apologize, and to make amends,” she said. “I have to model that behavior for him.”

—Staff writer Nicholas P. Fandos can be reached at nicholasfandos@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter at @npfandos.

—Staff writer Jared T. Lucky can be reached at lucky@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter at @jared_lucky.

This article has been revised to reflect the following clarification:

CLARIFICATION: May 28, 2013

An earlier version of this article stated that the mistakes regarding the email search scandal that Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds admitted to at the April 2 faculty meeting had cost her her deanship. To clarify, while some have suggested that Hammonds’s resignation was linked to her role in the email searches scandal, she was quoted in the New York Times Tuesday saying that the affair was “not a motivating factor” in her decision to step down.