Jackson, who identified herself as upper-middle class, also commented on this trend toward higher-income Black students. "Oh, sure, and that's why Harvard admitted me. They didn't have to take a risk on me...We're the least risky of the candidates that they admit," she said.

Dawson said one explanation for the trend towards upper-income families is that there are fewer social pressures on a student from that environment. "It's a lot easier to find the suburban upper-middle-class minority student," he explained.

Coming to Harvard is "less of a reach" for middle-income students, Dawson added, because they--unlike students from poorer families--are more likely to be informed that colleges will give need-based scholarships.

Furthermore, lower-income students who did come to Harvard faced additional pressures. Green said she came from a background that made coming through Harvard difficult. Her father attended school through eighth grade, and her mother dropped out to marry him. Her sister went to Kentucky State and earned a Masters degree, but Green was the first in her family to go to a prestigious Ivy League school and to attend law school.

"I would not have put my finger on it at the time," she said, but her background gave her unique problems to face. Coming to Harvard she was for the first time faced with peers who could afford "expensive clothing and going out to eat."

Black students also lack role models because of a longstanding dearth of minority faculty members. Black student protestors in 1969 demanded more Black faculty members, and students protested the same problem as recently as yesterday. The problem is a national one, in part because a disproportionately small number of Black students enter Ph.D. programs.

But alumni argued that Harvard could help solve the problem by encouraging more Black undergraduates to go into higher education and by making more of an effort to hire Blacks for junior and senior faculty posts.

Bailey questioned the lack of pre-education tutors in the houses, especially because there are pre-med, pre-law, and pre-business tutors. "You're not going to get that faculty if you're not promoting it from the student body right here," she said.

Many attribute the lack of Black junior faculty members to search committee members' failure to look beyond traditionally white schools for young academics. These critics say that white professors ask colleagues at other schools, who are generally white also, for recommendations, and do not look elsewhere. The problem of minority hiring is self-perpetuating.

Green said that Harvard is not to blame for the problem. "To scream about why there aren't professors is foolish," she said.

Nonetheless, she and Dawson said that Harvard should take the lead in minority hiring. "Harvard has a valuable role to play in training minorities for the future," he said.

Since there are few faculty role models, Black alumni have a responsibility to reach out to undergraduates, Green said. "By the time you are in a position to offer advice, "you're sufficiently old that you've forgotten what it's like to be an undergraduate," said Green. Undergraduates "don't have the courage or initiative to up and call," she said.

Black college graduates also have a responsibility to go out and actively encourage children, Green said, especially inner-city minority children.

"When the kid asks what do I do instead of drugs, you need to have a positive answer," she said. "Nobody thinks to say what resources can we offer to poor inner-city kids."

All children need attention and advice if they are to succeed later, she said. "The training takes because the kid is told early on 'this is what you have to do.'"

Harvard's Black alumni often feel a special sense of leadership duties. "There is a tradition at Harvard that you have a special responsibility," Clark said.

Extra responsibilities, extra problems with roommates, extra needs to prove their abilities--are they enough to make Black students who have come through Harvard wish they had gone elsewhere?

Bailey said that Black life at Harvard should not be construed as entirely negative. "There were positive issues," she said, pointing to the success of the alumni conference.

"Having been away from Harvard, I look back at my years here fondly," said Dawson.

And Green said, "To me Harvard was a true university in that it gave me a universe."