The alums also showed the administrators a special report presented in 1952 to the Board of Overseers, Harvard's lesser governing board. The report outlined the need to replace Memorial Hall, but that idea was later discarded.

Committee members used the report to remind administrators of Harvard's history of preserving its architectural landmarks.

"Our position is still that this was a fairly well-intentioned but ill-advised approach to the problem," said Roosevelt.

'Black Eye?'

In the wake of the meeting, some of the committee members are criticizing the administration's stance as inflexible.

"I think the Harvard administration will get a black eye. As Harvard alumni across the country and around the world find out, I think there will be hell to pay," said Ormand de Kaye, a member of the committee who did not attend the meeting.

"President Rudenstine will go down as the president who trashed the Great Hall of the Harvard Union," de Kaye said.

Members of the committee said they respect the work that the University has done to preserve its architectural history in the past.

But Forbes said that Rudenstine appeared "distressed that he must preside over this type of program, one which obviously creates problems for him."

"[The University] has invested so much in the project, to reverse course would be something they don't like to think about," Forbes said.

Some members of the committee accused the administration of hiding from the public its true motives for refusing to halt the project.

"They seem to be absolutely intransigent," de Kaye said. "I can't help thinking that there are is a hidden agenda. Possibly there are outside pressures on President Rudenstine."

Forbes agreed.

"There seems to be something about this program that we don't understand the politics of," he said.

The Future

But the alums said they intend to continue the fight nonetheless.

They said they hope to tell their story to the national news media in an effort to inform other Harvard alums and other concerned individuals ignorant of the plans.

The alums will also continue to urge faculty members, alums, undergraduates and others to make their voices heard.

Indeed, Paul A. Spera, national commander-in-chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, recently faxed a letter to Rudenstine objecting to the demolition of the Spanish-American War memorial in the Great Hall