Learning to Serve the Community

As a swarm of professors leave the University to join the Clinton administration and serve the nation, many undergraduates are getting started serving the public right here in Cambridge.

Each year, 1,500 Harvard students run homeless shelters, tutor inner-city children, plan campaigns for the environment and teach English to immigrants through the Phillips Brooks House Association, the University's largest undergraduate public service organization.

"The work we do serves the nation by focusing on the communities where we live," says association president Jennifer A. Goldberg '94. "We can make the most impact by working with the people closest to us. What I see us doing is working with communities of Cambridge and Boston to help people help themselves."

The association boasts more than 75 programs and provides services to the Cambridge and Boston communities year-round. Volunteers say the association provides services which are critical to local communities.

"A lot of the places where we're working and tutoring and helping people, we're the only ones working there," says association Vice President Toby N. Romer '94. "There aren't a lot of resources there so it's essential to a lot of communities.

Students say they feel most needed when they interact directly with people. Romer, who has tutored Southeast Asian high school students through the association, says working with students has been very rewarding.

"Students of mine call me up all the time for help with homework or English," Romer says. "At times they call me I feel I'm doing something pretty important."

Philip M. Grant '94 also says he senses a real need for the association's services. Grant directs Keylatch, an afterschool program with weekend trips for children in the Villa Victoria and Tent City housing projects.

"You can tell it really helps a lot when you go on field trips and get out of the city," Grant says. "I think it means a lot to the kids."

Leaders say that in addition to helping local urban areas, the association sets the standard for undergraduate service programs around the country.

"I think in a very national sense we are leaders in undergraduate public service," Romer says. "I think the organization we have set up is an example for colleges around the country".

Maria P. Rogahn '95-96, who transferred to Harvard from Georgetown University, says that Harvard's association is impressive compared to the resources of her former school.

"There was no umbrella group [at Georgetown] that covers everything like PBHA," Rogahn says. "It's very impressive how many more students are involved here."

In addition to immediately benefiting local communities, community service is helping to shape the students who volunteer as well.

Rogahn says she used to fear the homeless, but through her work with the association's Homeless Committee and Summer Homeless Committee, she has changed her own attitudes and now works to determine what solutions are most effective. For instance, Rogahn says she thinks transitional shelters work better than emergency ones.

"It's frustrating to see men back on the streets in the morning," Roghan says. "To try to treat the problem as a whole, it's very complicated."

John B. King '96, a member of the association's board of directors, says he hopes the volunteers will maintain their personal concerns, like Rogahn's, after graduation and throughout their professional lives.

"We're shaping the leaders of tomorrow," says King. "Hopefully when these Harvard students are heads of corporations or running the government, they will look back on their PBH experience. I think they'll reflect on it."