From daily tutoring programs to an undergraduate-coached basketball team, Harvard students spend a lot of time working with the high school students next-door. Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) deploys about 40 students regularly in its work with Rindge and Latin, and other groups such as the Housing and Neighborhood Development Program (HAND) send platoons of undergraduate volunteers.

But despite the elaborate network of programs, the problems of communication are many.

The experience of Patrick G. Jackson '91 is one example.

Jackson, the treasurer of the two-year-old Committee on Help for the Advancement of Needy Children through Education (CHANCE), says the gulf is wide between the ivory tower and public high school.

"I don't think there is enough interaction between Harvard students and Cambridge Rindge and Latin students," he says. "You walk past them in the Yard. It's like they have blinders on. It's as if Harvard doesn't care about them, and they don't care what happens at Harvard."

And Jackson's Rindge and Latin "little brother," 16-year-old Jorge L. Rodriguez agrees. "It sometimes seems as if Harvard is in its own world," he says.

Still Jackson--and Rodriguez--agree their experience with CHANCE is a valuable one.

CHANCE sponsors weekly meals and teaching sessions every Monday night for approximately 50 Rindge and Latin students who want or need additional academic help. The program includes classes in SAT preparation, writing skills and creative learning, says Vice President Andrew S. Richman '90.

One of PBHA's 36 community service committees, CHANCE also provides a "big brother-big sister" program.

"A lot of the kids we are helping are thinking about going to college and just don't know how to get there," Jackson says. "We try to dispell the myth that college is an ivory tower."

But CHANCE and others who tutor Rindge and Latin students face some tough statistics. About 60 percent of graduating seniors at Rindge go on to four-year colleges, but the school's average combined SAT scores were 47 points below the national average of 906 in 1988.

Still, Richman says that the informality of the CHANCE program--in contrast with the more formal setting in Rindge and Latin classrooms--is one way the program can help motivate students to improve their academic skills.

"The idea is for tutors and students to be able to talk in an informal way. We try very hard to make it very informal," Richman says. In this way, he says, CHANCE "tries to show them that college is not a scary place."

And while CHANCE's volunteers can never be certain their efforts are making a difference, sometimes the payoff is obvious.

"I never thought that I could get so involved with Harvard," Rodriguez says. "My impression used to be that [Harvard students] didn't want to help the community and didn't have the time. Students would look at me funny when I walked around, campus and they would think, "This high school student shouldn't be here.' Now I sort of look up to them."