At times during your first month here--at a crowded Yard keg party, perhaps, or in the lunch line at the Union--you will feel like you've met so many new friends, there can't possibly be anyone at Harvard whom you don't know.

You will indeed have met many new faces (at least 15 different guys named Dave, for instance).

But there are a few key people here whom you won't meet during that heady first month. And, unless you're unlucky and do something really, really bad (and we mean bad). you'll never have to meet them for the rest of your college career, either.

After all, these are folks with more important things to do than elbowing their way toward a nice warm keg of Bud. They're the ones who run the University, the stewards of its $5 billion endowment and 354-year history.

So while you'll probably never know them personally, you should know who they are and what they do. With that in mind, here's a guide to some of the faces behind the titles. Consider it a sort of Bulfinch's Mythology of Harvard's demigods.

Don't expect President Derek C. Bok to be a lame duck this year just because he's announced his intention to resign in June. Although Newsweek's conventional-wisdom gurus called him "Harvard's own Gerald Ford," Bok's low public profile can be very deceiving. He's no A. Bartlett Giamatti, which some people may regret, but he's no John Silber either, which makes every-one happy.

In fact, at a time when university presidents have taken to running for high public office and making regular appearances on "Nightline," Bok has managed to consolidate a remarkable amount of power simply by staying in his Mass Hall office and working harder than everyone else. The fact that he's been in the president's office since before you were born (1971, that is) also means that he hand-picked just about every administrator of any significance, including the dean of each of the University's nine faculties.

Bok started out in academia as a legal scholar, and many of his familiars say this experience left a strong mark on his management style. His approach to a task or a problem tends to be thorough, thoughtful, and supported by exhaustive research.

But while many praise him for the seriousness with which he faces the duties of his office, others complain that Bok has little tolerance for anyone he feels is less thorough and thoughtful than he is--in other words, for anyone who disagrees with him.

This "father-knows-best" attitude, critics say, is most evident in Bok's stubborn refusal to grant professorial status to any scholar he feels is unsuitable, even when the candidate is strongly supported by students and colleagues.

Bok has also drawn fire for his refusal to sell the South Africa-related stocks in Harvard's investment portfolio. That's an issue campus activists have been marching, petitioning, and sitting-in about almost since the beginning of his presidency.

But Bok's iron will was hardened in the fires of Vietnam-era protests, and pressure from activists invariably makes him even more determined to stay his course. So if you want to win him over to your side, don't march on his office--send him a well-argued letter with lots of footnotes.

Or, you could take your case to a higher court. For believe it or not, there is a body that, technically, has even more power than Harvard's president. The seven-member Harvard Corporation, of which Bok is an ex-officio member, is invested by its colonial charters with ultimate control over just about every aspect of running the University.

That's a responsibility its members take very seriously, particularly the task of overseeing the allotment of millions of dollars in each year's operating budget. They take it so seriously, in fact, that the Corporation, also known as the President and Fellows, is best known by students for the cloak of secrecy that enshrouds it. The Corporation publishes no minutes of its biweekly meetings, it shreds all its trash, and several of its members, all of whom have lifetime appointments, never speak to the press.

However, you should expect to read about the Corporation quite a bit in the press this year. That's because its members are responsible for selecting Harvard's next president.