"I like to give [high school students] a feel for what college is like," says Marks, who is in his second year as a volunteer for the program. "I would tell them what life is like at college."

More formal academic help for Rindge and Latin students comes from Harvard undergrads who serve as student teachers as part of the Undergraduate Teacher Education Program (UTEP), sponsored by Harvard's Graduate School of Education.

Robert Traver, program administrator for UTEP, says that 69 students are enrolled in this year's program. Between five and six observers and four student teachers are at Rindge and Latin this semester, he says.

"On a case-by-case basis, the reaction [to UTEP at Rindge and Latin] has been very favorable," Traver says. "The faculty enjoy the undergraduates because they are enthusiastic and provide fresh, stimulating ideas." Students who share material learned in their own courses particularly enhance class discussion at Rindge and Latin, Traver adds.

But while most of the undergraduates involved with CHANCE, Cambridge School Volunteers, Inc. and UTEP concentrate their efforts on academics, other Harvard students take a different tack in their interactions with Rindge and Latin.

Joshua A. Smith '91, for one, leads a group of seven Harvard students who coach a Rindge and Latin basketball team consisting of 10 to 15 students, many of whom are Hispanic immigrants to the United States.

And the Harvard International Relations Council sends 27 students each week into Rindge and Latin's American history classes to spend an hour or so talking about current issues.

"It's an opportunity for them to learn about things that normally wouldn't be taught in a high school curriculum," says Daniel A. Sachs '90, who directs the program. "It doesn't present Harvard students as total geeks only interested in facts."

But whether or not Harvard students can successfully move beyond their identification with the Ivory Tower, they continue to expand the reach of their connections with Cambridge's Rindge and Latin School.

The problem is what all these volunteers can realistically expect to achieve.

Michelle D. Holdt '92, a member of the Rindge and Latin Class of '87, says that most of her classmates did not take an active interest in the affairs of Harvard. And there was a reason for that, she adds.

"In high school I had very little sense of the quantity of Harvard students in the Square," Holdt says. "In high school Harvard Yard is somewhere that you walk through to get to the Square. I think it still is."

Holdt recalls an incident last spring that reinforced her sense of how separate Harvard and its high school neighbor are. During a party at Adams House, a fight broke out between Harvard students and Rindge and Latin students. The Harvard police, she says, arrested only the Rindge and Latin students.

"The people who got the shit were Cambridge students. I felt very torn during the incident," says Holdt. "In their minds, they [the Harvard students] are these rich, snobby students in their town. I think those impressions will always exist."