Doing Unto Others

Remigio Cruz '86 and several other Harvard undergraduates hopped a bus to the South End of Boston every weekday this fall.

There, in the predominantly Hispanic neighborhood of Villa Victoria, the students spent the afternoons providing cultural and recreational activities for underprivileged youths.

"The main problem with these kids is their identity--they have very little to identify with," explains Cruz, the coordinator of this one-year-old Phillips Brooks House program, called Key Latch.

The 16 Harvard students who made Key Latch their principal extracurricular activity often became the principal figures in the lives of these Hispanic children.

So on Saturdays, the undergraduates left for Villa Victoria even earlier and often came back later.

Key Latch is typical of the work PBH is currently doing throughout Greater Boston, says John H. Macleod '84, the outgoing PBH president.

But the work in Villa Victoria also seems to typify a general trend towards community service in student activities this fall.

Student leaders and College officials point to a sharp increase in volunteers for public service work and a steady, if lowkey, commitment to student activities and services by the Undergraduate Council as the major themes in undergraduate life this year.

Paralleling this apparent rise in interest in directly helping others both on and off campus has been a muting of political debate, a hallmark of the Harvard campus in the tumultous late '60s.

Students and officials are reluctant to pronounce the complete demise of political activity in the student body. They point out that Harvard's political passions are often seasonal, particularly the debate over Harvard's investments in South Africa, which usually centers on what action the University should take at spring shareholder's meetings. The 1984 Presidential campaign also seems to have drawn many of Harvard's politically minded students away from campus.

While observers are reluctant to predict how long this period of quiet, concerned student involvement will last, they say the mood and activity of the campus is beginning to resemble Harvard in the late '50s and early '60s.

"There is [now] a quiet but deeper effort at practical ways of helping others," says Dean of Students Archie C. Epps Ill. "It is quieter, but only compared to the '60s. That period can now be seen as really exceptional."

The campus this fall actually had one serious political disruption, when hecklers shouted down Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger '38 in a November 17 speech at banders Theater. And questionable behavior by the Harvard Band and initiation practices by the P Eita speakers club precipitated College crackdowns which dress some student complaints.

But, with few exceptions, students avoided confrontational instances on campus. Instead, they spent their time away from the classroom in often unglamorous projects.

The most dramatic change in student life, students and officials assert, is the emergence of volunteer in as the College's primary extracurricular activity.

College officials estimate that 400 undergraduates performed atleast part-time public service work for to outlying communities as part of Harvard's two-year-old Public Service Program, a President Bok initiative. Phillips Brooks House, the 68-year-old community service institution, has approximately 800 volunteers in 23 programs and is also witnessing continued growth, says Macleod.

Even after taking into account overlap between the two organizations, the figures suggest that one of every six undergraduates worked this fall to establish ties between Harvard and the disadvantaged. Says Ann Wacker coordinator of Harvard's Public Service Program: "The ongoing, week-to-week commitment of students [to the outside community] both during the day and in the afternoons has certainly strengthened and grown."

The opening of two shelters for the homeless by student groups and the acceptance of a plan to distribute extra Harvard dining hall food to Cambridge's homeless highlighted a lengthy list of innovative new projects and increasingly popular old ones.

Nine out of 13 Houses sponsored activities for assigned neighboring communities this fall, says Wacker, pointing to still more elaborate second-semester plans, including a new program involving Harvard athletes and troubled Cambridge schoolchildren. For the first time in recent years, PBH had contested elections for all its executive posts, reflecting the surge in interest in volunteerism, says Macleod.

Bok continues to make Harvard's involvement with the communities a top priority after initiating the Public Service Program, saying, "I don't think frankly that I had done as much as I could on this, until recently." "There's no question that the trend is up. I'm delighted by that," he adds.

Although its elections attracted fewer candidates, the Undergraduate Council also involved significantly more undergraduates than ever before. More than 30 undergraduate organizations divided nearly $19,000 in council grants for oncampuses, projects and more than 1000 students participated in campus-wide social events sponsored by the student government.

But what is most distinctive about the council this year is how its College policy-making efforts mirror the serious, often unrecognized community service work, officials say.

In its second year, the council had distanced itself from the checkered pasts of previous attempts at student government with a with a serious of modest achievements and a brand of leadership characterized by a willingness to research and cooperate.

Following last year's preservation of on-campus storage privileges with a study which showed how the College could simultaneously store student belongings and renovate five dorms, the council has participated in similar College debates on the intellectual life of the Houses, student-faculty contact, the Core Curriculum, and expanded food service.

"You have to look to the middle to late '60s to find an agency as effective as the current one," says Dean of the College John B. Fox Jr. '59.

The key difference seems to be an approach to College reform which emphasizes study and negotiation and contrasts the agitators' role previous student leaders have played.

"The semester saw a lot of real hard work," says one council member. "We're doing some pretty nose-to-the-grindstone type stuff."

College officials have previously noted that Harvard's legions of class presidents and community service workers often inexplicably derail their involvement in these endeavors when they arrive in Cambridge.

But the emergence of a serious-minded, hard-working council and new ties between Harvard and the community apparently indicate that students are now continuing involvement in activities in which they distinguished themselves in high school.

"Applicants to Harvard College always had a strong record of public service," says Fox. "We were worried that there was something about this place that discouraged it."

The trend toward unassuming extracurricular involvement toward improving the quality of life on and off campuses is also attracting new converts Kay Latch's Cruz is one.

From a small, low-income neighborhood in Trenton, N.J., Cruz says he first came to Harvard thinking. "I'd get my degree and get out of here."

"Working with these kids made the realize that was not for me," he explains. "I can see myself in them."