SERVING Diversity

Last fall Thomas Professor of Government Martin L. Kilson wrote an open letter to his classes criticizing the Black Students Association's seeming lack of commitment to helping "poor and underclass" Black communities outside of Harvard.

Kilson, who in the 1960s became the first Black tenured professor at Harvard, advised the leaders of the Black Students Association [BSA] that they should be "formulating week-by-week and month-by-month numerous projects to assist that long-haul task of outfitting the Black poor and underclass youth to read adequately, to manage math, to replace vulgarity with beauty, [and] to overcome hypermacho, anarchic and anti-humanistic values and personal identities."

Kilson's letter prompted a tense response from BSA President Kristen M. Clarke '97. The BSA's members were actively engaged in community service, she wrote, and they would continue to be. Still, BSA members say they were startled by the charge.

"I think Kilson's letter was a call to action for us," says Minority Students Alliance Co-chair Kecia N. Boulware '96, a BSA board member. "The nature of our organization is that we need to address the concerns of different Black communities."

Today the BSA is applauded by Kilson and others for its attempts to reach out to underprivileged communities of all races. BSA members, rallied by the group's Community Service Representative Jennifer L. Lipkowitz '97, are involved in projects that range from painting multicultural murals in Roxbury to organizing a Kwanzaa celebration for over 300 students at a local elementary school.

The group's leaders are trying to publicize its activities, which they say were always on their agenda, but especially under the young (mostly sophomore) leadership of the BSA today.

"This was the first year to discuss community service in detail. It was something that had always come up in the past. But no one ever sat down and came up with a plan with what we're going to do at this point, this point and this point," says Tiffany C. Graham '96, a former BSA board member and current cabinet member of the Phillips Brooks House Association's executive board.

Former BSA President Alvin L. Bragg '95 says that BSA members have always wanted to establish strong ties to the Black community through public service, but that they have found no organized outlet within the BSA to do so.

"I think the membership over the past three years has wanted the organization to be more involved in community service," he says.

Clarke says her attempt to entrench community service within the BSA's institutional structure was a response to challenges not only from outsiders like Kilson, but also to the needs of the BSA's membership.

"Something you'll often hear from many Black people is you have to give back to their Black Community. Our members asked for community service projects," Clarke says.

By resurrecting institutional emphasis on their community service activities the BSA joins groups such as Hillel, which has recently made the same move.

"The social action committee has become one of the most active committees at Hillel," says committee Co-chair Joshua E. Greenfield '97-'96. "In its present form, it was reinvented a year or so ago."

"I think social action was something peripheral to the structure of Hillel and it is now something which is organically part of the structure of the organization," says former social action committee Chair David A. Ganz '96. "People would miss it if it weren't there, whereas before people would be surprised if there were any action. It's a 180 degree turn in perception."

And while, like Hillel, the BSA already had a community service committee, it was Clarke's staff that created Lipkowitz's position and made it a part of the executive board. This action, say many members, both symbolically and technically moved community service issues to the forefront of BSA concerns.

"Kristen Clarke is the best thing to come down the pike," Kilson says now. "Clarke and her board are the best leadership the BSA has had in years."

Through BSA recruitment some Phillips Brooks House (PBH) service programs showed a marked increase in their numbers of volunteers last semester. Afterschool programs for predominantly Black and hispanic children living in Boston public housing projects like Mission Hill in Roxbury and Academy Homes in Dorchester have drawn the most BSA members, according to PBH leaders.

In the fall the number of Mission Hill counselors had increased over 50 percent from 1993-94, to more than 100 Harvard students participating.

"We felt it would be important to have more minority counselors for these kids so they could have more role models," says Mission Hill Co-director Kim M. Nichols '97. "So this fall semester we had a really big push. We had people going to BSA meetings and recruting...A lot of Black men are involved, which is really good, because a lot of these kids don't have positive male role models."

Nichols attributes the increase, in large part, to Clarke's willingness to "address the importance of community service, especially in the Black community."

"You will find that a lot of Black students come and focus on their studies solely," continues Nichols. And that, she says, is the wrong approach.

"Sometimes you're here at Harvard and you lose your way," Nichols says. "You don't know why you're here and you don't know what you're going to do. The main positive thing that the BSA has done this year is make a big thing of community service."

One Mission Hill volunteer, BSA member Jiovanni R. Neblett '98, says that the unity within ethnic groups can galvanize students to action. "I think unity is the only way for people to solve problems. BSA is a great example of a vehicle where people use unity or strength to solve them," she says.

While the BSA is commonly perceived as a mainly political group which often finds itself in the middle of controversy, members say the understated actions of its service wing serve to bring together the often fractious whole.

"At the same time that we're perhaps divided on the surface, when we can get down to the core [of what we're doing for the Black community] it can only unite us in a better understanding," says BSA Treasurer Joshua D. Bloodworth '97.

Bloodworth characterizes his executive board as being "very dynamic," bringing energy and openness to the BSA. Because of that, he says, participation in BSA activities is high and enthusiastic leaders have a good chance of steering eager members toward their favorite projects.

"We are very interested in getting students spread out through the programs at PBH, and I think ethnic organizations should play a key role in the volunteer recruitment process," Lipkowitz says.

Harvard community service organizers say they appreciate the volunteerism boosts they get from ethnic organizations. "I think [ethnic organizations and PBH] do have a strong relationship, not in the institutional sense, but in the membership sense," says PBH Association President Vincent Pan '96.

Pan says he expects that community service groups like those which the BSA might undertake would have to be administered through PBH simply because of practical constraints such as financial resources and established relations with communities.

The PBH president cited the Roxbury mural project and the children's Kwanzaa celebration last December as "two really good examples of events where you don't need on-going [support or] training."

Few minority organizations administer their own programs, despite large membership bases, for precisely this reason.

Even the Asian American Association's political action committee mostly funnels students to preestablished programs or runs shortterm projects like rallies and protests.

Still, students say they can't help but serve their respective communities, somehow. "It's hard to imagine BSA ignoring the problems of the urban city just as it is impossible for Asian American Association and Chinese Students Association to ignore what is going on in Chinatown," says PBH's Chinatown Adventure program Chair Gene Koo '97.

Lipkowitz says it simply doesn't make sense to shun the resources already provided by PBH for students who want to help their racial communities.

"A lot of ethnic organizations want to do community service programs different from PBH," she says, "but PBH is there it is a service organization with ties with the community."

"[At PBH] there are people who have volumes of experience who can help you. If you want to serve a community, the channels are there for you to do so and do it well, in a way you wouldn't be able to do at any university," Lipkowitz adds. "It would be a mistake to turn away from it."

But the BSA, despite a strong community service showing this year, has been the target of some criticism for doing exactly what it seems so proud of--working closely with PBH.

Despite Kilson's praise of Clarke in relation to past BSA leaders, he says he still feels that the group is not doing enough to really connect with Boston's Black community and its deepest problems.

"I know they don't do zero," he says. "But they should be doing three times as much."

"It's not enough, relative to the immense problems of the Black community," Kilson adds. "You don't fill this need and solve these problems with ritualistic and cathartic processes like the Kwanzaa celebration."

BSA leaders respond that there's no single "right" way to serve the Black community. "In terms of setting priorities, it is difficult to say the we should drop one aspect of our community service for another," says Boulware.

"It's really a matter of opinion where those efforts should be focused," she adds.