Shad Hall, a plush building set back across the river at the Harvard Business School, is home to some of the University's most modern furnishings and exercise equipment. The hall is so nice that undergraduates aren't allowed inside.

But Shad, which resembles a tony New York City athletic club, has also been a source of rumor and intrigue among B-School students this fall. At one point last month, the campus was buzzing with the story that the administration had secretly installed a swimming pool deep in Shad's basement.

The Harbus News, the weekly student newspaper at the Business School, got wind of the rumors and was trying to decide whether or not to include a story about the pool in its weekly campus gossip section.

Three years ago, the paper might have gone with a story about the rumors. But this time, the newspaper's editor, second-year Business School student Allison Nelson, waited to find out if the rumors were true.

"I was having our regular breakfast meeting with Dean [John H.] McArthur and I asked him to let us know, once and for all, whether or not there was a pool there," Nelson says.

"So he got up, got the keys to the basement of Shad Hall and we went down to the basement--back, way back where all the pipes were. Then, when we had walked all the way to the end, he took out the keys, opened a door and showed me a big empty room. This was where the pool was supposed to be--but there was nothing there."

That exchange is emblematic of the improved relationship between the Harbus and the administrators and faculty it covers.

For years, reporters from mainstream publications such as the Boston Globe and the New York Times had trouble getting access to 1Business School personnel, and relations between the Harbus and its school were frequently sour.

Journalists from the outside still often can't get in the door. (The school's spokesperson, Loretto Crane, is notorious in the Boston media for rarely returning reporters' phone calls). But Harbus editors and the Business School have reached out to one another. "They've taken some pot-shots at some of the faculty in the past and that has hurt [the Harbus]," says one Business School professor, who spoke only on condition of anonymity. "They made some big mistakes, but now they are trying to make up for them. Their approach now seems to be totally different."

Many Business School faculty and administrators interviewed over the last three weeks say they have noticed important changes in the accuracy and tone of the school's weekly newspaper over the past two to three years.

"I would say that in the last three years things have been quite good," says Rena F. Clark, operations director for the school's MBA program and one of the paper's main administrative contacts. "There is truly an effort to make certain that they're getting both sides of the story out."

"There had been a continuing effort during my tenure as an administrator to make certain that we've got a good working relationship with the Harbus," Clark adds. "And from that perspective, I've been quite pleased."

Still, memories are long, Several Business School professors laughed aloud when contacted for this article, saying they had no kind words about the Harbus.

Chris Temple, a second-year student and the Harbus sports editor, recalls the time several faculty tried to bring him up on disciplinary charges for a humor column he wrote a year ago. The piece suggested that a "very attractive" Business School professor come to a Halloween party dressed in a French maid's outfit.

"Some faculty were very upset about it because they said that it was sexually threatening," Temple says in retrospect. "But I worked it out with the professor involved, who told me to view this as a learning experience and to be more careful in the future."

From all indications, it appears that Temple and other editors at Harbus have taken that lesson to heart.