Harvard, Have You Forgotten About PBH?

Thirty years ago, Harvard wouldn't let the sexes mix in its dorm after the evening hours. Seemingly, Father John's authority knew no bounds. But today, a student group has involved area school children in two near-tragic traffic accidents, and Harvard has hardly seemed to notice.

In the wake of the two Philips Brooks House incidents, Harvard has cautiously remained separate from the student-run community organization. Although the two have no formal links, Harvard's attempt to distance itself from the organization is little more than a feeble smoke screen allowing the University to remain aloof--in the eyes of the law--from any possible tragedies that might hit home at PBH.

The first near-miss occurred after an irresponsible student packed 27 young children into a van legally meant to transport only 15 passengers. Because students were overflowing the regulation seats, some were seated on the floors--making it impossible for the counselors to maintain control in the small van as it sped along the Mass Pike to Riverside Park.

But the children did not have to wait until Agawam to ride the Thunderbolt. One apparently knocked the driver's hand, causing her to over-steer, overcompensate and end up flipping the van over the median of the highway. Luckily, only one child was seriously injured.

A mere nine days later, a Harvard shuttle bus loaded with children burst into flames on a different Massachusetts interstate. Thanks to the driver, who heard funny noises coming from the engine and evacuated the vehicle, no one was on the Harvard-owned rat trap (which regularly transports students to and from the Quad and Mather House) when it blew up.

The two incidents have very different causes, even if they both represent gross negligence. The first was clearly a case of an irresponsible driver unable to control an unsafe situation, which she herself had created. The crash raised questions about PBH and the safety measures it insisted upon (or didn't insist upon) when transporting young children from the inner cities to day camps activities. Indeed, the incident signalled serious mismanagement within the North Yard's PBH headquarters.

The culprit in the second accident also resides in the Yard--in the houses of the Administration. PBH can hardly be blamed for this one. Indeed, there is no doubt that, if a less well-trained driver had been at the wheel, all the passengers could hardly have safely escaped the bus.

PBH had a relationship with the University in which it regularly borrowed buses to help run its day camps, one of which gives inner-city youth an opportunity to get out into the countryside.

Thus, it is unbelievable that the University could ever lend PBH a bus that was about to burst into flames. When you lend someone your car, it is implicit that when they try to drive it, it will not blow up. But the real stomach-turner hits when one takes a look at how Harvard has handled the PBH affair.

Harvard has pretended to have no real connection to PBH. The University has never explained why, on one hand, it could lend shuttle buses to the group--and then claim that no official relationship existed.

There are other ties between the University and PBH: a committee of Harvard officials helps manage the PBH endowment and University officials provide PBH with innumerable favors and services (like lending them volatile buses). The students who run PBH are Harvard students, working out of Harvard buildings.

Lord knows, when Harvard officials discuss the pre-professional stereotype of their students, they point to PBH with justifiable pride. So how can they now pretend that the student group is just another Cambridge neighbor having some equipment problems?

But when there is a problem, Harvard's typical first reaction is to save its own skin, at the expense of an organization it has worked over the past century to establish in the community. Instead, University Hall relegated the problem to Frank Rose--the administrator made famous when he implemented a new time-table for shuttle buses one week before he was supposed to, wreaking havoc among Quad students trying to make it to class. Is a foul-up this big really a problem for shuttle bus managers, or for more experienced--and more higly placed--officials?

Although no one can be expected to enjoy standing up and taking responsibility for a failure, Harvard's refusal to do so is an embarrassment. It signals the University's unwillingness to stand by its students in a time of trouble. But, most important, it demonstrates a failure to come to grips with errors on its part which nearly caused the death of 30 youngsters. No one has made a concerted effort to find the cause of--or even to apologize for--this atrocity.

Instead, thus 351-year-old monolithic institution would rather duck behind a group of 20-year-old students with noble intentions, and let them take the heat for their problems. If Harvard is going to continue to interract with PBH, it must take responsibility for the organization's mistakes, as well as for its own.

Harvard must first actively work to effect a more strictly enforced safety policy at PBH. If PBH cannot enforce its own laws, then it cannot drive children. The Harvard administration is in a position to work with Harvard students to ensure that they are able to make such changes at a time when their credibility is being fundamentally questioned.

If Harvard is going to cower behind its students, how can it expect its students to act in any other way but to cower as well?