Inside a pale gray, unassuming little frame house on Garden St., a few individuals perform the intricate balancing act which forms the basis of Harvard-Cambridge relations.

One administrator there, Jacqueline A. O'Neill, wins near-unanimous acclaim for almost single-handedly making human communication possible between the monolithic, bureaucratic University and diverse activist groups which dot the Cambridge map.

And that praise says a lot in a city where local residents and University officials agree never to agree.

The first and only female vice-president of Harvard, O'Neill manages to walk the shaky tightrope between the professional, the political and the personal as successfully as she juggles University-community concerns.

With a Speaker of the House as a father-in-law and a former lieutenant governor for a husband, O'Neill has developed a knack for political negotiation by osmosis in her 17 years of marriage. A Dedham native herself, the 40-year-old O'Neill became intimate with every door of Cambridge during the campaigns of various members of her family.

When she came to Harvard in 1976, she encountered a history of hostile relations between the University and the community. Squabbles over land and buildings were a daily occurrence as the community repeatedly charged Harvard with insensitive imperialism. The battling came to a symbolic head when outspoken City Councilor Alfred E. Vellucci proposed that Harvard secede from Massachusetts and form its own city-state.

No one ever said her job would be easy.

O'Neill works hard at the Office of Community Affairs to improve the once-polarized relations between town and gown. "When the University does something, no matter how insignificant it may seem, we have to consider the consequences, actual or perceived, in the community," she says.

O'Neill's philosophy of community relations, she says, is based on recognizing the need to include every voice in the community in a non-bureaucratic way, and to understand Cantabrigians' ambiguous feelings towards Harvard--a mixture of pride and resentment.

By creating a committee made up of representatives from surrounding neighborhoods, O'Neill has pioneered an elaborate system of information-sharing among community leaders and Harvard officials, to prove to them both that "there is very little difference between a `Harvard person' and a `community person'," she says.

Those who have worked with her praise her cooperativeness, her friendly manner and her ability to end a stalemate. "She's made a considerable difference in relations," says Gladys P. Gifford, an activist in the Harvard Square Defense Fund, a citizens' group which monitors all Harvard Square issues from the police to graffiti. "She listens to the community point of view. She understands that there is one. And this brings about resolutions on issues that used to be big battles."

When O'Neill wants something done, she has no qualms about doing it herself, even if it involves a lot of garbage. One day, to prove a point about making the Square cleaner, she rolled up her sleeves and joined a group of inner city kids picking up trash, one Cambridge resident recalls.

"She is the most valuable player when it comes to Harvard relations," says John Shattuck, vice president for government and community affairs. Shattuck and several community activists attributed to O'Neill a deal in which Harvard and a community committee banded together against a private developer and succeeded in dramatically changing the plans for the condominium development across from the post office on Mt. Auburn St.

Using that model, O'Neill established community committees to compromise on the height of the parking garage next to the Kennedy School, and convinced the University to back off a proposed bridge between the Fogg and Sackler Art Museums.

Asset for Harvard or City?