The first thing Greg R. Halpern '99 did after looking at the front page photo of Cornel R. West '74 in The Crimson raising his fist in last Tuesday's Living Wage Campaign rally was to show it to dining hall workers.

Halpern, a campaign organizer, says he hopes that if some of the more well-known members of Harvard's faculty support their campaign, they will not only be able to pressure the administration more, but to remove the "fringe" label of the campaign's efforts.

"I think that's a very powerful message when you have the people at the `top' asking the administration to include the people at the `bottom,'" Halpern says.

Halpern says he hopes the Faculty support will force the administration to re-examine the campaign's demand to pay all Harvard workers $10 an hour.

"I really can't see the administration not taking this seriously," Halpern says.

"If they don't respond to what the faculty are asking them to do, I don't know who they'll respect."

Yet the Campaign's effort to coordinate faculty support reflect the nature of their organization. With only a handful of professors three months ago, the ranks of supporting Faculty have swelled to nearly eight times that number.

Since the rally, the list of faculty has grown to 115, with everybody from department chairs to lecturers signing their name to a mass letter to the administration.

Faculty notables on the list span the political spectrum, including Institute of Politics Director Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, to Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy Mary Jo Bane, an adviser in the Clinton administration who resigned after the 1996 welfare bill.

James L. Kugel, Starr professor of classical and modern Jewish and Hebrew literature and of comparative literature, teacher of this semester's largest class, Literature and Arts C-37, "The Bible and Its Interpreters," also gave his approval.

A mere three months ago, the situation was vastly different. When Harvard Law School's Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence Duncan M. Kennedy spoke at the campaign's rally in late February, he was in a distinct minority of faculty who publicly supported the campaign.

After the February rally, campaign members began gathering faculty supporters on personal basis, approaching their own professors after class and at office hours.

Aaron D. Bartley, a first-year law school student with prior organizing experience, approached Kennedy during his office hours to ask for his support.

Other professors who were personally approached included Pratap B. Mehta, associate professor of government and of social studies, and Patricia Sullivan, visiting lecturer on Afro-American Studies.

More professors joined the campaign during the widely-attended Rally for Justice protest outside of University Hall in early March, including DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates Jr.