<p>The Ivy League Harvard College apologised as it was embroiled in a fresh controversy over how it tried to find who leaked information about a cheating scandal to the media last year.<br /><br /></p>.<p>The oldest institution of higher learning in the US, the Harvard College - one of the two schools within Harvard University giving undergraduate degrees - founded in 1636 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, issued a partial apology as it came under fire for the way it handled a secret search of the e-mail accounts of 16 resident deans.<br /><br />“A very narrow, careful, and precise subject-line search was conducted by the University’s IT department,” due “to concerns that other information — especially student information we have a duty to protect as private-was at risk,” it said in a statement.<br /><br />The statement from Deans Michael D. Smith and Evelynn M. Hammonds stressed that the search was limited to administrative accounts, and that it did not involve a review of e-mail content.<br /><br />The search successfully identified a resident dean, who had forwarded a confidential e-mail, according to CNN. However, after review, school officials determined the dean in question had committed “an inadvertent error and not an intentional breach” by sending the message to two students.<br /><br />Other resident deans were not told of the search, which was first reported by The Boston Globe.<br /><br />Last month, the school announced that more than half the students implicated in the cheating scandal had been required to withdraw for a time. Many others faced disciplinary probation and the remaining were cleared.</p>
<p>The Ivy League Harvard College apologised as it was embroiled in a fresh controversy over how it tried to find who leaked information about a cheating scandal to the media last year.<br /><br /></p>.<p>The oldest institution of higher learning in the US, the Harvard College - one of the two schools within Harvard University giving undergraduate degrees - founded in 1636 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, issued a partial apology as it came under fire for the way it handled a secret search of the e-mail accounts of 16 resident deans.<br /><br />“A very narrow, careful, and precise subject-line search was conducted by the University’s IT department,” due “to concerns that other information — especially student information we have a duty to protect as private-was at risk,” it said in a statement.<br /><br />The statement from Deans Michael D. Smith and Evelynn M. Hammonds stressed that the search was limited to administrative accounts, and that it did not involve a review of e-mail content.<br /><br />The search successfully identified a resident dean, who had forwarded a confidential e-mail, according to CNN. However, after review, school officials determined the dean in question had committed “an inadvertent error and not an intentional breach” by sending the message to two students.<br /><br />Other resident deans were not told of the search, which was first reported by The Boston Globe.<br /><br />Last month, the school announced that more than half the students implicated in the cheating scandal had been required to withdraw for a time. Many others faced disciplinary probation and the remaining were cleared.</p>