In the mid-1980s, students erected a "shantytown" in the Yard to protest apartheid in South Africa-similar to the tactics PSLM protesters adopted over the weekend as they began sleeping in the Yard.

The "Yard occupation" was ultimately unsuccessful. For weeks, the anti-apartheid protesters lived in jury-rigged housing in the Yard, unable to force the administration's hand, and eventually left to go home for the summer.

The morning after Commencement, around 4 a.m., police and custodial crews moved through the Yard leveling the abandoned shacks and evicting or arresting the homeless people who had taken over occupancy.

A strategy of ending the occupation by attrition would put severe academic pressure on the protesters insides, as class assignments, term papers and eventually exams are left undone. However, PSLM members say that many professors are understanding of the sit-in, and might not hold students' accountable for missed work.

"All of my professors have been really supportive," PSLM member Benjamin L. McKean '02 said.

For their part, the protesters are also looking to history as they continue their occupation. In speeches over the weekend, protesters and their supporters repeatedly linked the Living Wage Campaign to past activism like the Civil Rights Movement and anti-Vietnam War protests. Some protesters inside the building are even claiming they are the first people to "occupy" Mass. Hall since Harvard opened the dorm to revolutionary troops.

"They didn't think the revolutionaries were right in 1776," said Timothy P. McCarthy, a Quincy House tutor in History and Literature, in a speech to supporters on Friday.

-Staff Writer Garrett M. Graff can be reached at ggraff@fas.harvard.edu.