He then presented the paper and the pinyata to a room of startled secretaries. As he quickly walked out, he deposited the shark on top of a row of file cabinets.

"We want to show Harvard [administrators] that we have the support not just of Harvard janitors but of Harvard students and others," he said as he rode the elevator back down to the ground floor.

Emerging from Holyoke, LaBella said to the crowd that he had "served the subpoena."

The protesters were clad in red t-shirts dubbing them the "254 strike force," a reference to local 254 of the Service Employees International Union. Many of the janitors belong to that local, in addition to membership in their Harvard union

Some marchers carried signs. One read, "Greed is a disease and Harvard is a sick institution."

Other unions and worker groups, mostly from Harvard, made up a sizeable portion of the crowd.

"What [the University] can do to them they can do to us," said Karen L. O'Brien '97, a member of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW).

She said that other unions on campus are concerned about a "trickle" of non-union workers who work part-time when union members are sick or on vacation.