"They didn't want to bow to student pressure and adopt a living wage, but they wanted to co-opt the idealism of the campaign and appease us," says William W. Erickson '00-'01, a member of PSLM.

Behind Closed Doors

PSLM members also criticize the committee for failing to communicate openly with the campus.

Members of the public could not attend committee meetings and members did not provide updates to the University community.

Students met with individual members of the committee, including Mills, on a few occasions, but knew very little about the committee's data gathering efforts and proposals for increasing benefits.

"We didn't have much idea what they were up to," Erickson says. "We were surprised they'd met 17 times. We were also surprised we didn't hear more from them."

Benjamin L. McKean '02, a member of PSLM, says the committee should have published the minutes of their meeting in order to give the Harvard community a better sense of their actions.

"I have no doubt that greater transparency at every level of the University would inspire greater confidence and be helpful," says McKean, who is also a Crimson editor. "Even now it's not clear to me what took that long," he says.