Last fall Thomas Professor of Government Martin L. Kilson wrote an open letter to his classes criticizing the Black Students Association's seeming lack of commitment to helping "poor and underclass" Black communities outside of Harvard.

Kilson, who in the 1960s became the first Black tenured professor at Harvard, advised the leaders of the Black Students Association [BSA] that they should be "formulating week-by-week and month-by-month numerous projects to assist that long-haul task of outfitting the Black poor and underclass youth to read adequately, to manage math, to replace vulgarity with beauty, [and] to overcome hypermacho, anarchic and anti-humanistic values and personal identities."

Kilson's letter prompted a tense response from BSA President Kristen M. Clarke '97. The BSA's members were actively engaged in community service, she wrote, and they would continue to be. Still, BSA members say they were startled by the charge.

"I think Kilson's letter was a call to action for us," says Minority Students Alliance Co-chair Kecia N. Boulware '96, a BSA board member. "The nature of our organization is that we need to address the concerns of different Black communities."

Today the BSA is applauded by Kilson and others for its attempts to reach out to underprivileged communities of all races. BSA members, rallied by the group's Community Service Representative Jennifer L. Lipkowitz '97, are involved in projects that range from painting multicultural murals in Roxbury to organizing a Kwanzaa celebration for over 300 students at a local elementary school.

The group's leaders are trying to publicize its activities, which they say were always on their agenda, but especially under the young (mostly sophomore) leadership of the BSA today.

"This was the first year to discuss community service in detail. It was something that had always come up in the past. But no one ever sat down and came up with a plan with what we're going to do at this point, this point and this point," says Tiffany C. Graham '96, a former BSA board member and current cabinet member of the Phillips Brooks House Association's executive board.

Former BSA President Alvin L. Bragg '95 says that BSA members have always wanted to establish strong ties to the Black community through public service, but that they have found no organized outlet within the BSA to do so.

"I think the membership over the past three years has wanted the organization to be more involved in community service," he says.

Clarke says her attempt to entrench community service within the BSA's institutional structure was a response to challenges not only from outsiders like Kilson, but also to the needs of the BSA's membership.

"Something you'll often hear from many Black people is you have to give back to their Black Community. Our members asked for community service projects," Clarke says.

By resurrecting institutional emphasis on their community service activities the BSA joins groups such as Hillel, which has recently made the same move.

"The social action committee has become one of the most active committees at Hillel," says committee Co-chair Joshua E. Greenfield '97-'96. "In its present form, it was reinvented a year or so ago."

"I think social action was something peripheral to the structure of Hillel and it is now something which is organically part of the structure of the organization," says former social action committee Chair David A. Ganz '96. "People would miss it if it weren't there, whereas before people would be surprised if there were any action. It's a 180 degree turn in perception."

And while, like Hillel, the BSA already had a community service committee, it was Clarke's staff that created Lipkowitz's position and made it a part of the executive board. This action, say many members, both symbolically and technically moved community service issues to the forefront of BSA concerns.