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A statement posted online by the university was its first official acknowledgment that it had looked through the accounts of resident deans last September, searching for the source of a leak of information on the cheating scandal that rocked the university last spring. Harvard did not say how many employees' accounts were involved, but people briefed on the matter have said there were 16.

Some professors have reacted angrily to news of the searches, or to the fact that the resident deans were not all notified, calling it a breach of trust.

One leak involved an e-mail from the university's Administrative Board to resident deans, offering guidance on how they should advise students who were accused of cheating. Some professors have questioned why such a relatively minor breach should have prompted a university investigation.

But the statement on Monday, attributed to Michael D. Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Evelynn M. Hammonds, dean of Harvard College, said administrators were more concerned about another leak, in which the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, recounted a closed-door discussion of the scandal by the Administrative Board.

"While the specific document made public may be deemed by some as not particularly consequential, the disclosure of the document and nearly word-for-word disclosure of a confidential board conversation led to concerns that other information — especially student information we have a duty to protect as private — was at risk," the deans wrote.

Resident deans live among students in Harvard's residential houses and act as student advisers, and they are also lecturers, meaning that they teach courses but are not on a tenure track to professorship. Each one generally has a personal Harvard e-mail account, and one specifically for the job of resident dean.

The deans' statement on Monday emphasized that the search was conducted only of the resident dean accounts, not personal ones, and only for the subject line on each message, to determine whether the confidential e-mail had been forwarded.

"No one's e-mails were opened, and the contents of no one's e-mails were searched by human or machine," they wrote.

The search determined that one resident dean had, in fact, forwarded the e-mail to two students who were accused of cheating and had sought the dean's advice, because the contents of the e-mail directly addressed their situation.

"Those involved in the review and the conversation with the individual were sufficiently convinced that it was an inadvertent error and not an intentional breach," the deans' statement said. "The judgment was made not to take further action."

The statement did not say whether administrators determined how the e-mail found its way to the news media, or who was responsible for the other leak, of the Administrative Board's deliberations.

The resident dean who had forwarded the message, and the senior resident dean, were told about the e-mail searches shortly after they took place. But the others were not told until last week, after The Boston Globe inquired about the searches.

A university policy says that under some circumstances, the university can search a faculty member's Harvard e-mail accounts, but that the faculty member must be notified beforehand or soon after. Other employees do not have the same protection.

It is not clear whether the university regarded the resident deans as faculty members, but it stressed that the e-mail accounts involved were associated with their administrative roles.

"Some have asked why, at the conclusion of that review, the entire group of resident deans was not briefed on the review that was conducted, and the outcome," the two deans wrote. "The question is a fair one. Operating without any clear precedent for the conflicting privacy concerns and knowing that no human had looked at any e-mails during or after the investigation, we made a decision that protected the privacy of the resident dean who had made an inadvertent error and allowed the student cases being handled by this resident dean to move forward expeditiously."