"No pressure by students is going to have any effect on me," Bok said during the University Hall protest, although he called faculty searches for Afro-American Studies one of his top priorities.

After the sit in, the Faculty Council at the time reaffirmed regulations for bidding "unacceptable obstructions" of University buildings. Later, Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 issued a strong letter of warning to sit-in participants.

But this year's group of top Harvard officials, perhaps not as hardened by experience, did not so easily discount the potential effects of student demands. In fact, the Knowles-Rudenstine-Green troika was eager to acknowledge the validity of student concerns.

Rudenstine, in an interview after the minority student coalition's protest, said he and other Harvard administrators were taking "very seriously" the coalition's demands and said the undergraduates had raised "genuinely substantive issues."

Knowles formed a subcommittee of the Educational Policy Committee to look into questions of ethnic studies and affirmative action.

And the Faculty Council this week, far from condemning students, discussed the need for a broad, comprehensive re-examination of race relations and ethnic studies at Harvard.

The coalition has, since March 5, met with a laundry list of Harvard's top authorities, including Rudenstine, Knowles, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education Lawrence Buell, Associate Dean for Affirmative Action Marjorie Garber. Jewett and Dean of Students Archie C. Epps.

For the students, the rhetoric has also toned down. In 1990, the student activists' spokesperson said to officials, "If you do not meet the demands, we will get rowdy again. We will have no choice but to smear your name in the disgusting truth which you have created."

Leaders of the 1993 coalition, though their flier accused Harvard of "institutionalized racism," have made no such explicit threats.

But there is one more key difference between 1990 and today. The students of 1990 today can see a burgeoning Afro-American Studies department, one which has recently tenured another prominent professor and which has hosted high-profile visitors like Spike Lee and novelist Jamaica Kincaid.

The coalition of 1993 does not yet know what the results of their meetings will be, but students say they will not give up the fight.

"We have established clearly what our demands are and we'll expect a response...we don't want to be threatening to the University, but we are determined to see them through," said Zaheer R. Ali '94, Black Students Association president.