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.

Nelson says she now edits the "Gang of Nine"--the name of the paper's professor-rankling humor section--more carefully than it has ever been. "Things border on being funny and mean. And [professors are] sensitive, it can make certain people, certain professors angry," Nelson says. "So if I see something that is offensive I don't hesitate to do something about it, to err on the side of caution."

Two years ago, the Harbus began putting bylines on the humor columns in an effort to increase writers' accountability.

Nonetheless, Nelson says faculty "usually don't find the humor section very funny."

"They have a history of some troubles with the faculty," says another professor, also speaking on condition of anonymity. "Their sense of humor isn't all that funny."

Some have vowed never to read the humor section, which regularly critiques professors' performances.

"They love it when we print the humor columns in a separate second section because then they can just throw it away," Nelson says.

The humor column may never be popular, but Nelson says inveterate attitudes, while hard to charge, are slowly warming toward the publication. She says there has been a concerted effort among editors to improve the paper's relations with the school's administration.

"In previous years the relationship was not very good," says Nelson, who took over as editor last January. "We've had much better communications and a lot of the editors have tried to be more responsible."

She says the improved relationship is the result of an increased sense of editorial responsibility.

"In the past we printed articles without getting all the facts or all the opinions from administrators. And a lot of time when they saw a story in the paper on Monday they felt unprepared, broadsided," she says. "Now we alert them and make sure to get a response. I think that in return they have been very helpful in giving us information."

For example, McArthur has regular breakfasts with Harbus editors. Reporters from the paper also meet every two weeks with media-friendly Robison Professor of Business Administration James I. Cash, the director of the MBA program.

"If you ask anyone, Harbus had a difficult time with the administration before we came on board," says Harbus publisher Tarek Khlat, referring to his group of editors. "There were some very one-sided articles that were printed as fact. There were some stories that got some people really angry."

"But we have established new lines of communication with the administration," Khlat says, "Our new dialogue with the administration doesn't affect what we print, we're just able to make sure that our stories are sourced correctly and are accurate."

In January of last year, Nelson sent around surveys to Business School faculty asking them for their impressions of the paper and how it could be improved.

"Those kinds of efforts to establish better communication have really made the relationship less antagonistic and have lessoned the pressure on both sides," Nelson says. "There's a group of faculty who have the Harbus and it could be because of something that happened 10 years ago, but there is also a group of faculty who support us."

Rena Clark says she is slowly being won over. Reporters now call her up to a week before their deadlines to run stories by her or request an interview.

"They're demonstrating great integrity in how they handle their relationship with the school," Clark says.

The administration seems to be reciprocating. During fall registration, the Harbus was given a special station at which to hand out its papers to incoming students.

Despite the new detente, the Harbus, a non-profit corporation, covers the news fiercely and is not reluctant to assert its editorial independence.

That contrasts markedly with the newspaper at the top-ranked Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. The editor-in-chief there acknowledged last month that he had received $1500 in secret "stipends" from his school's administration.

When Harbus ran that story, they attached the following editor's note: "The editorial and writing staff of the Harbus News do not, and have never, received compensation of any kind."

"There's always that tug of war between the press and the establishment," Khlat says. "It's a partnership, but you're always going to get that tension. But now, even if they don't like what we write, they still respect us."

The Business School and its student newspaper try to get along.CrimsonAnne- Marie L. TaberTAREK KHLAT, the publisher of the Harbus, works at a terminal in the newspaper's office.