The Struggle for the Survival of Public Service at Harvard

For more than 90 years, the student members of Phillips Brooks House Association, Inc. (PBHA) have been committed to helping the needy adults and children of Cambridge and Boston.

But for at least a quarter of that history, student leaders of the University's largest public service organization have been locked in a series of battles with the College administration over how the group should be run.

"It is a cyclical conflict between PBHA and the administration," says Greg A. Johnson '72, the outgoing executive director of the PBHA organization. "Unless the structure is changed and either the students or the administration [are] given complete control, the problem can never be truly resolved."

Twenty-five years ago, the organization entered a period of financial difficulties and begged the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) for a subsidy simply to keep its doors open.

Today, the battle has come nearly full circle, with the student leaders of the nearly 2,000-member organization demanding increased financial and administrative autonomy.

A Growing Organization

Phillips Brooks House was built in 1900, and PBHA was established in 1904. Its initial purpose was to help the needy in the city of Cambridge; but, beginning in 1954, the association became involved in projects in the metropolitan Boston area and neighboring communities.

The new activities pushed against the organization's financial and administrative limits.

"We probably did become more grandiose," says then-PBHA president Christopher D. Hoy '70-'71.

For example, in 1960, PBHA introduced a program called Project Tanganyika that prepared students to take a year off to travel to Africa to do volunteer work.

The expansion resulted in greatly increased expenditures for coordinating the central operation of the association with the work of the individual committees.

"[Money] was always a problem," Hoy says. "But there wasn't that much administrative staff--one executive secretary and her assistant. She knew everything. People like me came and went."

In the early 1960s, the need for money for PBHA's expanded slate of programming was filled by grants from foundations. But by 1965 these initial grants ran out, and PBHA was forced to turn to the College for money.

In 1966, PBHA applied to the FAS administration for emergency funding. A $20,000 subsidy was granted by then-dean of the Faculty Franklin L. Ford for the 1967-1968 academic year.

The purpose of this money was to pay professional consultants, to improve cost-accounting and to provide personnel for fundraising.

But this measure proved both temporary and insufficient.

Other financial support to PBHA included $20,000 from several endowments, some individual donations and one federal government grant.

The majority of this money, however, was earmarked to go only to specific committees, which meant that very little of the money could be used for central administrative costs.

As a result, the $20,000 subsidy the Faculty originally intended as an emergency measure had to be renewed for each of the next three years.

The organization also suffered a marked drop in the number of student volunteers. Membership, which increased throughout the 1960s to a high of 1,047 in 1968, dropped to only 382 students in 1969.

Although a public perception that PBHA was not radical enough to suit the times was a large reason for the drop in membership, a financial crunch that led to the elimination of five programs before the 1970-1971 school year also played a role in its decline.

A Crisis Year

In 1970, a proposed phase-out of the $20,000 Faculty subsidy put nearly a dozen PBHA programs in jeopardy.

In addition, a $20,000 cutback in maintenance costs forced PBHA members to close the building on weekends and to eliminate its evening hours.

Students were concerned the cutbacks would spell the end of the then-70-year-old organization.

"Closing the building at 5 p.m. would be tantamount to closing most of what goes on in the house," PBHA graduate secretary Barry O'Connell '65 said at the time.

Students say that even programs that were thriving felt the constraints of the financial crisis.

"We really built something exciting; our program seemed to have some standout results, but there was constant financial pressure," says Burton E. Rosenthal '72, who was a member of the Columbia Point summer program.

In the fall of 1970, nearly 200 first-years were denied PBHA membership, primarily because there was not enough space within existing programs.

Clearly the group was saved--but not without a struggle.

After Ford decided to reduce the FAS subsidy to PBHA by annual increments of $5,000, phasing it out entirely by 1973, PBHA requested line-item status on the FAS budget and a permanent subsidy from the Faculty.

Dean of the Faculty John T. Dunlop, who succeeded Ford, then decided to create a subcommittee of the Committee on Students and Community Relations (CSCR) to study the issue.

But the committee recommended in December 1970 that the Faculty deny the organization the permanent subsidy it had requested and instead give only a temporary subsidy of $10,000 for 1971-1972--the amount Dunlop had promised PBHA in the first place.

Eventually a compromise was reached. The faculty granted PBHA $14,000 for the 1971-72 school year.

Battles Continue

The problem of programs' overextending their financial bases continued throughout the 1970s, until Johnson, who began his tenure in 1979, engineered a gradual turnaround of the organization.

In the last 15 years, PBHA has slowly rebuilt its programs and expanded. But despite the relative stability the group has attained, PBHA continues to be plagued by conflict with the administration.

In a letter dated May 21 of this year, Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III threatened to remove all financial support from the organization if members continue with their plans to choose a new executive director and create a board with voting non-student members.

If such a resolution comes to pass, PBHA could be left where it was 25 years ago: underfunded and desperately trying to meet its commitments to the constituency that need it most--the people of Cambridge and Boston.