AALARM's activities have traditionally centered on rallies and postering campaigns.
Representatives from many student groups have branded AALARM's message and tactics as hateful and inflammatory.
"I believe in free speech," said Daniela Bleichmar '96, co-director of AIDS Education and Outreach and a Crimson editor. "I disagree with bigotry and misinformation....I know those two posters [last month], those were misinformed and were bigoted."
Royce C. Lin '96, a former BGLSA co-chair, agreed.
"I think it's a good thing for the University to recognize the right of any group that wishes to speak," Lin said. "However, I think that the message that AALARM seeks to disseminate...is one that is very harmful to the general spirit of the Harvard community in that there is a message of intolerance and hate."
AALARM members defend the group's tone and tactics.
"I would say that the only reason that people would consider us inflammatory is that so many people on this campus are so far gone that messages about traditional morality seem inflammatory," Malone said.
But even Epps has objected to AALARM's tone. After the AIDS postering campaign, the dean called several members into his office to tell them that "the tone of the speech was not contributing to a civil college, and that I hoped they would help us promote tolerance toward other people," Epps said.
At that meeting, Epps assured the group that the students' rights of free speech were protected, all parties said yesterday.
Still, at least one AALARM leader said Epps may have crossed the line.
"I think to some extent it was intimidating in that he called several members of the board up and left messages on their machine expressing a wish to meet with them," said one AALARM officer, speaking on condition of anonymity. "But...he could have pressured us a lot more. And I was actually quite surprised that he didn't put more pressure on us."
A History of Activism
In the first two years of its existence, AALARM was a vocal force on campus--even if it usually found itself in the minority among activists.
In the spring of 1993, during Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Awareness Days, AALARM waged a postering campaign criticizing the gay lifestyle.
The group received publicity after Joshua L. Oppenheimer '96-'97 tore down an AALARM poster in front of Robert K. Wasinger '94, then a member of AALARM's Presidential Council.
And AALARM was the student group that most vocally defended the University's choice of Colin L. Powell as the 1993 Commencement speaker. Powell had come under fire from many campus groups for his role in maintaining the government's policy forbidding openly gay citizens to serve in the military.
Even last spring, when AALARM was officially defunct, the group displayed posters bearing "AIDS: Sodomy = Death," according to Malone. Students also criticized that postering campaign