In many American university communities there persists a personal antagonism between students and residents. That a significant number of Harvard students manage to over-come such conflict is thus somewhat unusual.

This group, however, represents only a small proportion of the undergraduate body. To most students and as many Faculty members, relations between Harvard and the City of Cambridge seem a ludicrous yet extremely bitter contest between professors and proletarians, with the latter always ready to attack.

This attitude is highly unfortunate, not only because it is unfounded in fact, but also because it too easily rationalizes snobbishness on the part of many students. It is this condescending attitude, as much as any supposed economic or social differences, which gives rise to anti-Harvard feeling in the city.

In a senior thesis two years ago, Judy Hallerstein '59 suggested that anti-Harvard bias was inversely proportional to the incomes of Cambridge residents whom she interviewed. People in the lower economic categories were the bitterest critics of the University; the higher the income, the more favorable was the attitude.

But Miss Hellerstein's theory seems to offer only a partial explanation. A town-gown conflict is the order of the day in too many American university towns, except perhaps where the academic community is the town. Yet, even in a small town like Canton, N.Y., home of St. Lawrence University, tension exists between students and residents. Yale is notorious for the bad relations between its students and the people of New Haven.

Different Forms of Contact

Despite underlying tension, relations between Harvard students and Cambridge are much better than those in New Haven, Providence, and Princeton. Here, quite a few undergraduates come into contact with local citizens, either voluntarily or involuntarily; and, whatever its forms, this contact cannot help but lead to better understanding on both sides. Significantly, few of these student forays from the Square area have deliberate propaganda purposes.

The list of student groups working in some way for the city is perhaps surprising. Apart from members of the Phillips Brooks House, which sends out the most students, undergraduates on such organizations as the Harvard University Band and students at the Loeb Drama Center manage to break down the barrier between themselves and the residents of the city.

Of the forces for good emanating from PBH, approximately 250 students serve directly in Cambridge. The list of committees and projects take a full typewritten page, single spaced.

Students work in both the city's medical and mental institutions. At Holy Ghost, City, and Mt. Auburn Hospitals they do ward chores, help with rehabilitative therapy and, in short, do everything from scrubbing pots to learning X-ray technology.

A student in Social Solutions 100 Field Work in Mental Health, helped launch Wellmet, the "half-way house" for mental patients about ready to return to normal life. Three or four students living with a small group of patients help to approximate as much as possible the life the patients will soon be leading on the outside.

Several other PBH committees deal with educational problems in Cambridge. While a tutors committee assists poor students in local high schools, the special education program offers remedial reading courses at PBH itself. Harvard undergraduate teachers (HUT) help in classroom teaching, instruct seminars for gifted students, lead extra-curricular activities at Cambridge High and Latin School.

Social Work

To many Cambridge residents, however, social work in the neighborhood settlement houses is the most important of PBH's services. In an area with one of the highest juvenile delinquency rates in the country, undergraduates work as club leaders, athletic coaches, scout leaders, and crafts teachers. In this case, the "clubs" are actually neighborhood gangs which have joined in with the settlement house.

The undergraduate leaders are extremely important to the clubs, whose original gang structure often represents the only possible security for children whose parents and neighborhoods are derelict. Molly Taylor '62, president of PBH, described the violence with which a club reacted when the settlement house had to delay in assigning it a leader.