Five Years Later: PBHA Still Wary of College

It has been five years since the student volunteers of Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) clashed with the administration in the biggest rally in recent memory.

Now, an uneasy calm reigns within the College's largest service organization. Despite what both sides call good faith efforts to restore order, certain institutional problems continue to plague the tenuous marriage of PBHA and the College administration.

In September of 1997, the PBHA Board of Trustees voted 12 to two to approve a compromise settlement that would keep PBHA within the University's purview indefinitely, ostensibly ending a three-year skirmish between students and administrators for control over the University's umbrella service organization.

Nearly three years later, student leaders have worked to return PBHA's focus to its programs, leaving aside the bitter political battles with the College. But the difficulties have not gone away.

Student leaders say they've never been entirely comfortable with the PBHA administrator, Assistant Dean for Public Service Judith H. Kidd.

And many PBHA students say they are confused by the complex governing structure created by the 1997 agreement. Two separate bodies purport to oversee PBHA's operations. One is the Board of Trustees, of which eight of 18 are students. The other is the PBHA Cabinet, made up entirely of students.

Students and administrators disagree over which governing body, the Trustees or the Cabinet, has the ultimate say within the organization.

So, the struggle for control of one of the campus's largest organizations continues, leaving many to wonder if the conflict has impacted the quality PBHA has to offer.

Who Governs Whom?

Compounding PBHA's current difficulties is its complex governing structure--particularly the degree to which the organization is tied to the Harvard administration.

PBHA members and administrators themselves can't quite agree on the all-important question of which body--the Trustees or the Cabinet--has final decision-making power over PBHA programs.

"By being a part of the Cabinet, [students] are a part of the governing body of PBHA," affirms Natalie Guerrier '01, PBHA's president since January.

"The Cabinet is the governing body, which is why we are a student-run organization," she adds.

By contrast, administrators cite the 1997 agreement which names the Board of Trustees as the governing body.

"The official wording is: 'Harvard University recognizes the Board of Trustees of Phillips Brooks House Association, Inc. as the governing body of the Phillips Brooks House Association student organization, as the PBHA Cabinet recognizes the Board as its governing body," Kidd wrote in an e-mail message.

Student volunteers say the structure of the organization is difficult to understand.

"Generally, the leadership and governance of PBHA when it comes to its relationship with the administration of the College, is quite hazy and very confusing for the most part," says Andrew Park '01, a PBHA officer.

. "Folks like [current president Guerrier] or the past president [Joseph M. Garland] are the few able to navigates its murky waters," he adds.

Because the organization includes students, College administrators, professional staff and community leaders, the chain of command is complicated--unlike in other student groups.

"The organizational structure is rather confusing and lines of accountability are fuzzy," Christine C. Chen '00, a former PBHA officer, wrote in an e-mail message. "For example, the executive director of PBHA reports to both the president of PBHA (a student) and the assistant dean. And sometimes there is a conflict of interest."

Another problem stems from the apparent similarity between the student organization of PBHA, created in 1904, and the College's department for public service, Phillips Brooks House (PBH), founded in 1900. PBH gives staff support to both PBHA and other campus service programs like CityStep and HAND.

"People tend to think that the University has the final say in everything we do," says Paul E. Mussman '00, a former PBHA officer.

"A lot of that confusion just comes from the similarity of the names," he says.

Like many students interviewed, Mussman was a student during the struggle for autonomy and is more vocal than most current board members about the student-administration tensions.

"The big problem comes because they're both in the same building and they both have the same name," Mussman says. "You have these two groups that don't trust each other and they both have the same name."

PBHA's Past

The seeds of the conflict over student autonomy at PBHA date back to September 1994, when the Faculty of Arts and Sciences released its Report on the Structure of Harvard College.

To the dismay of campus leaders, the report recommended that a faculty committee be given PBHA oversight powers.

Also recommended was the creation of a new "Assistant Dean of Public Service" post to replace both PBHA's popular Executive Director Greg Johnson '72 and Director of the Office of Public Services Gail Epstein, who administered non-PBHA public service programs such as CityStep and HAND.

Students protested the proposal to Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles, but to no avail.

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68's selection of Kidd as the new assistant dean in November 1995 exacerbated the growing conflict, as students said their recommendations and input had been ignored.

On December 7 of that year, about 700 students and community leaders rallied in Harvard Yard for PBHA's autonomy and to protest Kidd's appointment.

It was the biggest campus rally in recent memory.

By June of 1996, students and administrators reached a tentative compromise over the structure of the organization, and established a new governing body, a Board of Trustees consisting of students, PBHA supporters and College officials. 15 months later, the Board voted to make the temporary agreement permanent, and the tense period of bitter conflict between students and administrators came to an end.

To Learn or to Lend a Hand

Although progress has been made in repairing the 1997 breach, the fundamental philosophical issue that divided the two sides remains, according to student leaders.

"The College's primary concern is ostensibly the educational value for its students, while PBHA's primary concern is its clients and communities," says Garland, last year's PBHA president. "If PBHA ever puts the educational value for students higher than community priorities, that will be a sad day."

Garland says he expects the tension to continue indefinitely, because the two sides have "fundamentally different missions."

Chen says that the current relationship between students and the College is "very distrustful."

"I think that the problem stems from the fact that PBHA and [Harvard] have oppositional views of public service, and thus, even though we're all supposed to be on the same team, the [Harvard] representatives...and their allegiances [and] motivation will always pose a threat to PBHA and its mission," Chen says.

Garland and several other former and current student officers say the 1997 agreement itself left many issues unresolved--and that students were pressured to give their assent.

"Frankly, the decision was made to sign the modified agreement because the College threatened that we would be thrown out of the building, lose student group status and lose our staff support if we did not sign the agreement they presented," Garland says. "Their deadline was two days before students were allowed back on campus for the fall semester. Faced with their responsibility to communities and the near-impossibility of winning a battle with Harvard, [the PBHA Board of Trustees] signed the Agreement in September 1997."

Institutional Memory

Members of this year's graduating class still remember the contentious battles over PBHA's future. But they are the last class that will, and many worry that board members in the fall won't have the desire to question the College.

Andrew J. Ehrlich '96-'97, PBHA's president in 1996, says it is an "inevitable fact" that administrators conveniently or intentionally "depend on the quick turnover of students" to enact changes in student organizations.

"It was regularly the case when I was president of PBHA that I would be told things directly in contrast to what my predecessors were told by the same individual," Ehrlich says.

Chen says she worries that with each graduating class, PBHA will lose some of its urge to question the Harvard administration.

"All they have to do is wait for students to graduate and suddenly, the University administration is the writer of history," Chen says.

But other former and current PBHA leaders are confident that "institutional memory" will endure.

Garland says the fundamental differences in purpose between the College and PBHA do not preclude the two organizations continuing to work together, but says they are important to bear in mind.

"While PBHA remains student-governed, I don't believe the 'institutional memory' will ever really fade," Garland says. "The College officials seem to think that it will, but the strongest thing that ties PBHA together is its stories, which are continually being made and retold. Our history and our stories are so important to us that we pass them along as intact as possible."

Making Progress, One Step at a Time

Whatever problems remain, students and administrators say they're committed to making the 1997 agreement work.

Guerrier says PBHA is trying to increase communication between Trustees and Cabinet members. Last year, the performances of the four full-time directors of programs were reviewed; this year, the executive director's role and performance is being evaluated.

Kidd says that the Board of Trustees has started to receive monthly updates on Cabinet meetings, and has asked to "be informed when board presence at a particular Cabinet meeting would be useful."

"Many board members, including myself, have expressed interest and willingness to attend Cabinet meetings, at the invitation of the students," Kidd wrote in an e-mail message.

The two sides met at a December retreat, where a professional facilitator helped them heal "a lot of the residual tensions," according to PBHA Programming Chair and Trustee Priscilla Chan '01.

And Jason Purnell '99, who served as PBHA's vice president in 1998, says that the appointment of Paul McDonald to the paid post of PBHA executive director, was a major step forward.

"It was really the first major step toward implementing the agreement with the University since the Board of Trustees was formed, and it was vital to bringing both stability and autonomy to the operation of PBHA," he writes.

Moving On

Students say they value their autonomy--and say it hasn't been compromised by their tangles with the College.

"We're definitely not completely autonomous," Guerrier says. "[But] on a day-to-day basis in our programs, they definitely are."

PBHA officers say they are focusing on putting the group's focus back where it should be--on public service.

"A lot of PBHA student leaders are aware of the history," Guerrier says. "All of us are working towards moving beyond that."

She says her goal for PBHA is "to make sure that we do what we do to the best of our ability."

In that vein, various aspects of the organization are being restructured.

Garland carried out an extensive evaluation of the organization's summer urban programs last year, and another board member is currently leading an evaluation of PBHA's mentoring programs to see if program goals are being met.

Program groups separated by category, such as after-school programs, teen programs and summer programs, meet on a regular basis, so program directors can give feedback to officers and get help with recruitment.

And efforts are being made to increase Cabinet participation among program directors, who are usually focused on their service programs and not on PBHA as a whole.

PBHA has also begun its Centennial Capital Campaign, which has the ambitious goal of adding $7.2 million to PBHA's coffers to ensure its long-term financial stability.

In the end, student leaders say that PBHA's public service mission trumps everything else.

"I have a great deal of respect for the students (and a great many who were not students) who stood up for the integrity of Phillips Brooks House Association, but I don't think even they would have wanted the fight to last forever," Purnell says. "The real fight is for the children and adults in our programs who live in the communities we serve."

Chan says she agrees.

"We run some of the best programs out there because of the dedication of individual students. I've seen some of the most committed students working late nights in the PBH computer lab, lending a hand at the last moment because it was needed, going the extra yard even though they didn't have to."