But PBH members insist they are not abandoning social service. Most committee heads emphasize that their object is not to phase out social service--the founding purpose of PBH--but rather to become aware of the effects of that service, to prevent future nightmares like the Bridgewater trial citation. They believe continued social services does not rule out social action.

"There are some committees with defined volunteer positions," says Schmidt. "There's always going to be a need for tutors, for one-to-one programs. What varies is how much emphasis we're putting on them. We're deeply committed to social service."

PBH members attribute their new focus to a variety of influences: changing attitudes among the students and in America as a whole, a development of new ideas as a reaction to executives' frustrations, and three specific events that retiring president Cooke says helped "clear away the barriers."

One of those events was the Bridgewater Prison suit. The order two were the decision that tutoring in the Brighton school system was counterproductive in the long run, and the institution of three Phillips Brooks House courses open to all undergraduates.

The courses, all new this year, are Social Sciences 171, a course that combines educational theory with actual teaching in the Cambridge school system, a Quincy House seminar on Cambridge, and an Ed School course on tutoring methodology that includes teaching reading in Boston prisons. PBH began to consider creating courses two years ago, when the House first hired an educational consultant. The idea of courses grew out of "general concern about educating volunteers," says Cooke.

The doubts created by the Brighton and Bridgewater problems and the new possibilities for educating volunteers opened up by the courses have led to volunteers' increased feelings of responsibility for their role in the Boston and Cambridge communities. Most of the executives trace their abrupt change in attitude to last spring, when they say the executive, through meetings and discussions, came to feel that PBH policy needed overhauling. Schmidt and Cooke say that all 30 cabinet members now agree on the shift to social action: it is only on the nuts and bolts of implementation that they have to continually confer and compromise.

PBH is pleased with some of its first steps, in particular with two new committees. The House set up the East Boston People's Rights Committee last year, designed to help welfare recipients get their checks from an un-cooperative bureaucracy. The particular charm of this committee is that once it has helped educate and organize a community pressure group, it will withdraw from East Boston and the resident organization will be self-sufficient.

PBH feels its change in attitudes are parallel to a national trend. Executives now speak of a retreat from Great Society optimism. They came to Harvard from schools and towns influenced by the sixties, and since they have been here they have become repulsed by the old paternalistic patching up of community problems.

Alan Brickman '76, the incoming executive vice president and retiring chairman of the education committee, says he "used to believe that reform begins in the classroom. Not any more."

But PBH members do not feel that Harvard has helped them rethink their commitment to the community; as in the case of Prisons, they have been pressured by outside groups and people, and by frustrations they encountered while doing social service work. Doug Schmidt says his Harvard experience actually hindered his social commitment. While at high school in Evansville, Ind., Schmidt says he was dedicated to protests and community work. Schmidt and a handful of friends organized the first free lunch program in his home town.

"At Harvard," Schmidt says, "my energies were subverted. At the end of last year I realized I had compromised myself." He says he lost sight of interests and "sold out to some of the status trips that go along with Harvard. I don't feel that I'm an exceptional case. We're getting our heads together."

Schmidt says he is not an exception because he has spoken to so many students at Harvard and Radcliffe who are dissatisfied, restless, or bored, but who do not have any "outlets." He believes Harvard could be better structured to help students find those outlets. Although he says PBH is not the answer for everyone, he hopes to help make students' involvement in the community a meaningful option. Community work is "not the way Harvard is slanted." Schmidt says, but perhaps through worthwhile programs and increased publicity, PBH can help change Harvard's slant.

PBH has a strange administrative tie with the University. A 12-member faculty committee, headed as of two weeks ago by the Rev. Peter Gomes, approves the spending of the House's endowment, which makes up approximately one half of the total annual budget. "PBH is a small Harvard department," explained Woody N. Peterson, '70, the graduate secretary of the House. "The committee is responsible only for the building." Peterson explained that PBH as a student group using the building is totally separate from the department even though they share the same name.

Half of each year's budget does not come from the endowment but from contributions and gifts. Students are free to spend that half of the budget however they desire. Peterson said next year's projected budget is $52,000, plus any additional money raised by individual committees this summer.

The budget breaks down into mainly salaries (administrative assistant, bookkeeper, secretary, graduate secretary, educational advisor, hired consultants) and automobile, telephone, and equipment expenses, basically everything except the utilities and upkeep of the building, which are paid for by the Harvard administration.