Only a Few Undergraduates Manage to Break Student-City Barriers

In many American university communities there persists a personal antagonism between students and residents. That a significant number of Harvard students manage to over-come such conflict is thus somewhat unusual.

This group, however, represents only a small proportion of the undergraduate body. To most students and as many Faculty members, relations between Harvard and the City of Cambridge seem a ludicrous yet extremely bitter contest between professors and proletarians, with the latter always ready to attack.

This attitude is highly unfortunate, not only because it is unfounded in fact, but also because it too easily rationalizes snobbishness on the part of many students. It is this condescending attitude, as much as any supposed economic or social differences, which gives rise to anti-Harvard feeling in the city.

In a senior thesis two years ago, Judy Hallerstein '59 suggested that anti-Harvard bias was inversely proportional to the incomes of Cambridge residents whom she interviewed. People in the lower economic categories were the bitterest critics of the University; the higher the income, the more favorable was the attitude.

But Miss Hellerstein's theory seems to offer only a partial explanation. A town-gown conflict is the order of the day in too many American university towns, except perhaps where the academic community is the town. Yet, even in a small town like Canton, N.Y., home of St. Lawrence University, tension exists between students and residents. Yale is notorious for the bad relations between its students and the people of New Haven.

Different Forms of Contact

Despite underlying tension, relations between Harvard students and Cambridge are much better than those in New Haven, Providence, and Princeton. Here, quite a few undergraduates come into contact with local citizens, either voluntarily or involuntarily; and, whatever its forms, this contact cannot help but lead to better understanding on both sides. Significantly, few of these student forays from the Square area have deliberate propaganda purposes.

The list of student groups working in some way for the city is perhaps surprising. Apart from members of the Phillips Brooks House, which sends out the most students, undergraduates on such organizations as the Harvard University Band and students at the Loeb Drama Center manage to break down the barrier between themselves and the residents of the city.

Of the forces for good emanating from PBH, approximately 250 students serve directly in Cambridge. The list of committees and projects take a full typewritten page, single spaced.

Students work in both the city's medical and mental institutions. At Holy Ghost, City, and Mt. Auburn Hospitals they do ward chores, help with rehabilitative therapy and, in short, do everything from scrubbing pots to learning X-ray technology.

A student in Social Solutions 100 Field Work in Mental Health, helped launch Wellmet, the "half-way house" for mental patients about ready to return to normal life. Three or four students living with a small group of patients help to approximate as much as possible the life the patients will soon be leading on the outside.

Several other PBH committees deal with educational problems in Cambridge. While a tutors committee assists poor students in local high schools, the special education program offers remedial reading courses at PBH itself. Harvard undergraduate teachers (HUT) help in classroom teaching, instruct seminars for gifted students, lead extra-curricular activities at Cambridge High and Latin School.

Social Work

To many Cambridge residents, however, social work in the neighborhood settlement houses is the most important of PBH's services. In an area with one of the highest juvenile delinquency rates in the country, undergraduates work as club leaders, athletic coaches, scout leaders, and crafts teachers. In this case, the "clubs" are actually neighborhood gangs which have joined in with the settlement house.

The undergraduate leaders are extremely important to the clubs, whose original gang structure often represents the only possible security for children whose parents and neighborhoods are derelict. Molly Taylor '62, president of PBH, described the violence with which a club reacted when the settlement house had to delay in assigning it a leader.

Since no club can enter the house without a leader, this group felt and appeared inferior to the others. The result was that the group wrecked one of the house's buses.

To discover the reasons for the damage, as well as the culprits, and to secure some reparations, Miss Taylor and other leaders held a summit conference of sorts with all the clubs in this particular settlement house. By threatening to withdraw undergraduate leaders from all the clubs, the PBH group brought pressure from the entire group to bear on the delinquents.

The culprits declared themselves and worked to repay $75 of the damages. They did not wish to add to their initial sense of unpopularity the knowledge that they had deprived all the clubs of their undergraduate leaders.

Part of the work in the neighborhood houses is an attempt to draw the parents into the settlement houses and to encourage them to rehabilitate themselves. Often, too, PBH workers visit homes in these neighborhoods on journeys of both research and remedy.

Some of the children's programs in themselves produce small armies from the metropolitan area. Over 1,200 youngsters, for example, in late April each year, descend on the University for PBH Kids' Day.

Despite the great effect of PBH on Cambridge, Miss Taylor explained, there are still several areas where it can improve the nature and efficiency of its programs. Since social work is relatively new (70 or 80 years), professional social workers tend to be jealous of the success of their amateur counterparts. To minimize this resentment and open the way for increased amateur participation, Miss Taylor hopes in some way "to make the professionals we work with more aware of our ability."

In the more professional academic approach to the community, a few courses in the Department of Social Relations use Cambridge as a vehicle or model for research. A prime example of such a course was Soc Rel 184, The Social Psychology of Crime.

An assistant in the course, The Rev. Juan Cortes, S.J., explained that he and his colleagues paid Cambridge delinquents to come in from one to five times a week to discuss anything they chose. Cortes emphasized that he and his students tried to discourage any idea of a doctor-patient relationship with the interviewed youths--who happen to be among the city's worst offenders.

Mutual Profit

Both sides profited from the discussions. The researchers and students obtained their information and, Cortes said, the subjects gained a more thorough understanding of themselves. Although Cortes would favor more use of the community as a vehicle for course work, he predicted no increase in the practice in the near future, due to the absence of several professors. "Nobody at Harvard is interested in working with delinquents," Cortes said.

Robert W. White, chairman of the Department of Social Relations, Suggested, however, that student penetration into the city for research and course work was necessarily small. "Work has to be limited and carefully supervised, because Cambridge citizens don't want people streaming in on them at all hours," White said.

"There is always a certain number of phone calls that come in whenever one of these projects is launched. There is just enough of an element of distrust of roving scholars that we must use a certain care and keep the inquiry in terms the community can understand," he declared.

Of course, anyone familiar with the Square area will realize that around here "students streaming in" may easily result in a riot. However, as the Administration might benefit from a closer political relationship to the city, students and professors alike might benefit from observation and practice in so varied a locality.

The academics might see their theories come to life, or fail during a more conclusive test than the research rooms provide. Students would find their educational experience broadened with an understanding of their neighbors in Cambridge "real life." For Mid-western or Western students, Harvard might become more rewarding (or, indeed, more unbearable) with increased interest in and contact with the life of the communtiy. Moreover, better student-citizen understanding filters to the higher-ups on both sides--where mutual understanding is essential.

The city of Cambridge has in fact a certain admiration for Harvard, particularly for some of its extracurricular organizations. Surprisingly enough, one of the more popular is the Harvard Band.

The extent to which some segments of the community rely on some undergraduate organizations is more evident in their absence than their presence. When because of the rigors of examination period the Band almost withdrew from the Memorial Day parade, some city officials felt slighted. Luckily, the Band played. Although no slight is involved, many Cambridge residents also notice when, for reasons akin to exams, the CRIMSON fails to appear every morning.

Another undergraduate group, although an informal one, set a precedent last November which hopefully will continue. With assistance from students and from Stephen A. Aaron '57, assistant director of the Loeb, a group of Cambridge teen-agers produced an original drama in the Loeb's experimental theatre.

"Trouble in Swanson's Alley," written by a student at Rindge Technical High School, depicted the moral dilemma of two gangs, who were committed to fighting each other but weary of battle. "What I was trying to show," author Frank "Junior" Dempsey told a reviewer, "is how teen-agers are fixing their own problems up. You see, a lot of people would think that Pete--he's the one who squeals to the other gang to stop the rumble--well, a lot of people would think he's a fink. But he's only trying to help them out. So, you see, the point is there is no such thing as a fink."

Perhaps the production of "Trouble in Swanson's Alley" served somehow to show both Harvard and Cambridge students that there are fewer "finks" on each side than the other surmised.

It is not just through social work or extracurricular activities that undergraduates penetrate the Cambridge community, however. Part-time jobs bring many students into the community and, in one recent instance, lent one Harvard student a certain fame.

After changing storm windows, Nathan C. Foote '62 left a ladder leaning up against the local house where he was working. Later, the house caught fire. When, through Foote's mistake, people on the second floor were able to escape safely, the Boston Record highlighted Foote as a hero.

Married Students

It would seem that married students residing in Cambridge would have more contact with the non-Harvard community that their unmarried classmates. They are just as isolated, however.

"We live in a Harvard housing development. The only real contact we have is with other Harvard people," observed William W. Hillier '62, who lives with his wife in an apartment in Shaler Lane. Even away from the Square, the same barrier exists, which, for example, separates Dunster House from the neighborhood right at its back door.

To insist that everyone take an interest in the Cambridge community would be as foolish as it would be unrealistic. The usual argument for the presence of the undergraduate at Harvard is that he is here to study.

It is more to the point, however, to argue that certain organizations and students, inclined by their nature to social and community work, take a more active part in Cambridge. This is not to propose more Phillips Brooks Houses, necesarily. Rather, groups like the undergraduate religious and political clubs, some of which are quite active, might focus more of their activities on the community.

The impetus behind such work should not be simply for better University-city relations. This is incidental. Rather, in a community with so many challenges for urban and social renewal, the interested undergraduate might learn a few simple facts of life that he would not otherwise get.