"People are screaming, because MIT is renting this land to so many social agenices, and throwing them into the area in high concentration," James Caragines, a resident of Cambridgeport for over 50 years, says. "The problem centers are not supervised well. We would like to see the area deinstitutionalized," he adds.

To this end, the Cambridgeport Alliance has been holding monthly community hearings to discuss the development of the area and to consider rezoning it, although so far no legislative action has been taken.

Like MIT, Lesley has, in the past few years, been running into unexpected problems. In the late '60s, the college planned to expand its classrooms and dormitories. With the approval of the City Council, the school closed the east end of Mellon Street and constructed the first phase of the new campus.

But in 1977, when Lesley began purchasing land in the second step of its plan, college officials encountered a different response. Residents of the Agassiz neighborhood filed a petition to downzone the two-block area into which the college intended to expand. Despite angry letters and attempts at negotiation from Lesley, the council passed the downzoning proposal last spring.

In November, the council asked Lesley to declare a self-imposed moratorium on the purchase of property until new guidelines to implement the land use regulations were prepared. The college's board of trustees unanimously rejected the proposal.

Robert D. Lewis, executive vice-president of Lesley, attributed the conflict to ignorance. "We essentially didn't know one another existed in terms of major interests until about three years ago," he says, adding, "We knew there was a Cambridge Agassiz group, but it was then caught up mostly in confrontations with Harvard."

Preusser sees the problem differently. "Fifteen to 20 years ago when Lesley closed the street, they did so in a very freewheeling way by accommodating the council," she says. "This time they encountered a totally different situation. The council was not willing to make deals with them."

William Collins, a member of Cambridge's community development department, has been working on a plan to implement the land use regulations since October. "The approach is a progressive one, recognizing the need of institutions to remain vital while seeking to preserve the residential integrity of neighborhoods," Collins says. But he adds, "I'm not sure just how the council will react to it."

Collins will take his proposal to the city this month. If it passes, Cambridge will have its first set of real guidelines regulating universities since the dispute began. If it fails, there will be other tries, for leaders on both sides of the fence seem to agree that the relationship between the city and its institutions is entering a new era