The University, led by its general counsel disagrees.

"They are Harvard police officers," Taylor says when asked if individual officers might be considered public officials. "Deputization does not convert them into public officers, and it does not convert the department into a public agency."

But some law enforcement agents disagree.

"[HUPD officers] are public officials in the sense that [state police officers] are," says Robert J. Bird, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts State Police.

Burns, the sheriff who is second-in-command of the Middlesex County office, says that deputy sheriffs are "for some purposes" public officials, although he said he believed that special deputies were not public officials for the purpose of the public records act--though his own deputies are, indeed, subject to those laws.

When asked in an interview whether HUPD officers were public officials, Riley says "in the sense that they're given public powers, yes."

The issue of HUPD's reluctance to release information has come up before.

Two incidents in February of 1989, where HUPD arrested students but did