"We were in about the fifth row from the front," Graham says. "That gave us the attention. Harvard, the Ivy league, the most prestigious college--that makes good headlines."

Nonetheless, Graham says that the spirit of unity created in 1969 was short-lived. She attributes it to a change in the type of student admitted to Harvard in the early 1970s.

"They were conservative, they were white males, and they were Republican," says Graham.

But the events of the year did have some effect on University policy. In September, 1969, Harvard announced a plan to sponsor 389 units of low- and moderate-income housing. And Sullivan says that today the University is much more responsive to city needs.

"They put more time into community efforts now, which they never did before," says Sullivan.

Other changes--not directly linked to the student uprising--forced Harvard to reevaluate the way it dealt with the community. In 1970, the city enacted its current rent control law--designed to put an end to the practice of landlords splitting up apartments and to provide low-cost housing for the city's residents.

Graham took her campaigns off the streets and into the city council in 1971, and eventually entered the State House as a Cambridge representative.

"Rent control, which was originally put forward by Communist students and militant Blacks, has become the dominant issue in city politics," says William B. Cunningham, an activist who worked to get rent control enacted.

Many of the same complaints still exist. Community residents still criticize Harvard's role in the real estate and development markets. For example, Harvard's proposed hotel on the former site of the Gulf Station has ignited once again the charge that the University is ignoring community concerns.

The turbulent events of 1969 thus had few tangible consequences for the city's relationship with its largest landowner. But the short-lived alliance between student and community activists did serve as a benchmark in the way the two groups thought of each other.

"It raised people's consciousness about how the University's run, and how the city's run," says Allen. "It raised student consciousness about themselves and their University and their world."