It was the biggest campus rally in recent memory.

By June of 1996, students and administrators reached a tentative compromise over the structure of the organization, and established a new governing body, a Board of Trustees consisting of students, PBHA supporters and College officials. 15 months later, the Board voted to make the temporary agreement permanent, and the tense period of bitter conflict between students and administrators came to an end.

To Learn or to Lend a Hand

Although progress has been made in repairing the 1997 breach, the fundamental philosophical issue that divided the two sides remains, according to student leaders.

"The College's primary concern is ostensibly the educational value for its students, while PBHA's primary concern is its clients and communities," says Garland, last year's PBHA president. "If PBHA ever puts the educational value for students higher than community priorities, that will be a sad day."

Garland says he expects the tension to continue indefinitely, because the two sides have "fundamentally different missions."

Chen says that the current relationship between students and the College is "very distrustful."

"I think that the problem stems from the fact that PBHA and [Harvard] have oppositional views of public service, and thus, even though we're all supposed to be on the same team, the [Harvard] representatives...and their allegiances [and] motivation will always pose a threat to PBHA and its mission," Chen says.

Garland and several other former and current student officers say the 1997 agreement itself left many issues unresolved--and that students were pressured to give their assent.

"Frankly, the decision was made to sign the modified agreement because the College threatened that we would be thrown out of the building, lose student group status and lose our staff support if we did not sign the agreement they presented," Garland says. "Their deadline was two days before students were allowed back on campus for the fall semester. Faced with their responsibility to communities and the near-impossibility of winning a battle with Harvard, [the PBHA Board of Trustees] signed the Agreement in September 1997."

Institutional Memory

Members of this year's graduating class still remember the contentious battles over PBHA's future. But they are the last class that will, and many worry that board members in the fall won't have the desire to question the College.

Andrew J. Ehrlich '96-'97, PBHA's president in 1996, says it is an "inevitable fact" that administrators conveniently or intentionally "depend on the quick turnover of students" to enact changes in student organizations.

"It was regularly the case when I was president of PBHA that I would be told things directly in contrast to what my predecessors were told by the same individual," Ehrlich says.

Chen says she worries that with each graduating class, PBHA will lose some of its urge to question the Harvard administration.

"All they have to do is wait for students to graduate and suddenly, the University administration is the writer of history," Chen says.

But other former and current PBHA leaders are confident that "institutional memory" will endure.