In my opinion, the College-PBHA compromise worked very well for the first several months, as long as student leaders were committed to making it work in good faith," Skocpol wrote in an e-mail. "It stopped working only when hostilities were artificially escalated."

And in an e-mail, Lewis also expressed his continued support for the deal.

"I would just say," he wrote, "that nothing was wrong with last summer's agreement as far as the College was concerned."

Hot Time, Summer in the City

In May, PBHA presented a new proposal to its cabinet, the body composed of the leaders of each PBH program that elects the Board of Trustees.

The revised compromise would have allowed the organization to hire its own director and staff, to be held responsible to both PBHA and to the College.

The proposal, which would have eliminated Smith's vacant position and enabled PBHA to hire an executive director, associate director and development coordinator directly responsible to the Board of Trustees, passed the cabinet by a 65-1-1 vote.

The proposal was then backed by a majority of the Board of Trustees in June, when the Board voted 6-5-1 for the move toward greater independence from the College.

But Epps and Lewis quickly made clear that the College would not accept the compromise, refusing to allow someone not hired by the College to run a Harvard College program housed in a Harvard College building.

"People who work in a University building work for the University," Lewis told The Crimson. "They have made several proposals that are not things that we can accept in the context of PBHA."

PBHA student leaders responded by saying the College is continuing to underestimate students' ability to run their programs with autonomy.

"The difference between Harvard and PBH isn't primarily in the language or in the details," said PBHA President Roy E. Bahat '98. "It's in where control is going to lie."

Bahat says PBHA wants to see a "consistent line of authority" running up from the program directors to the top of the organization-something the College, with its insistence on approval of the hiring of a director, would obstruct.

Epps also announced in July that the College would insist upon approving all PBHA hirings, including positions below executive director.

"Each case will be considered the normal way," he said. "The decision is made based on the quality of the argument and the actual need."